


This is Not Our Fate

by WareWolf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU after season 12 of Supernatural, Borrowing some Sons of Anarchy characters, Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, M/M, No Multiple Ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-07 05:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 67,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11052306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WareWolf/pseuds/WareWolf
Summary: This is a follow on from Best Endeavours [season 12 AU with Crowley/Bobby]  focusing on Lucifer.   Bobby Singer gets an offer of hunting-related employment in a little California town and moves there with his foster-child Kyra after the events of the season 12 finale.  Lucifer unleashes his revenge upon the world and his enemies.





	1. Dark and Stormy California

**Author's Note:**

> For any new readers; Bobby and Crowley are in a relationship dating from Bobby’s return from Heaven, the story told in Best Endeavours. Kyra is a 12/13-year-old girl whom Bobby is fostering, rescued from Lucifer in that previous story. She's collateral damage from Lucifer’s return, which the boys are unable to shove off on Jody because she already has two foster children. If this was a TV show, it’d be a spin-off from Supernatural, with Sam and Dean as occasional visitors and Bobby and Crowley being the main story. 
> 
> Title taken from the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower.

 

 

Bobby Singer could swear he heard the muffled sounds of nightmare before he even woke up.  Not that he’d slept that well anyhow.  New bed, new place, unfamiliar creaky bits when the wind blew.  That was on the _house_ , thank you very much, though come to think of it, his joints were pretty much the same.  He supposed the house was all right.  The plumbing worked, it came ready furnished and he hadn’t heard much from the neighbours.

That was by design, as much as was possible.  Since he’d been cast out of Heaven, as Castiel dramatically insisted on putting it, he didn’t exactly have an overabundance of resources.  He had hoped to find somewhere not too far from the bunker where Sam and Dean were holed up, but Lebanon, Kansas, was a small town and nobody knew anyone there who could help.  They’d spread the word through the hunters-and-allies network that a reasonable rental was needed for an ex-hunter – and he had growled at that description – and some cop friend of Jody’s knew another cop who knew someone all the way across the country in some little town, close to Lodi in coastal California, that needed a tenant who could double as security for a rural property.  The sort of security who wouldn’t blink if he discovered supernatural critters hanging around, and who knew proper methods of disposal.

He’d been concerned that his new charge would be upset at moving so far.  “C’mon, you could drive it in a day,”  Dean had scoffed.

“ _You_ could, maybe,”  Sam had retorted.  “A normal person would stop for the night halfway.”

“And your point is?”

Bobby had let them argue and simply loaded up the car.  It had been in the Men of Letters underground garage for gods knew how many years, but there wasn’t a thing wrong with it.  He’d never seen himself as a Mercedes sort of guy, but so long as it got them there.  Crowley, of course, had been delighted with the sleek black finned classic and bemoaned the fact that he was going to be “busy” and couldn’t join Bobby and his charge on the almost 24-hour road trip through Colorado, Utah and Nevada.  He did, however, promise to join Bobby in taking it for “a quick spin or two” once they arrived.

Kyra, it turned out, had been rapt at the thought of living near the ocean.

Bobby heaved himself to his feet with his eyes still shut and reached for the bathrobe thrown across the bed, putting it on as he crossed the room to flick the light switch.  Only then did he open his eyes and pad down the hall, past the room he intended as his study – right now a mess of unopened cardboard boxes – and to the bedroom beyond it.  He knocked quietly on the door.  “Hey darlin’.  Can I come in?”

The response was muffled, but he opened the door anyway, finding the light on and the occupant huddled under the bedcovers, peering out at him as though from a cave.  She watched as he sat down carefully near the end of her bed.  “Sorry, Bobby.”

“It’s all right.  Nothin’ I haven’t been through before.”  Though admittedly it had been quite some years since he’d had a couple of preteen boys dumped on him by their demon-hunting father and had to deal with their bad dreams, the consequences of some less than stellar childhood experiences and parenting.  He pulled his robe about himself, surprised to hear a faint chuckle from the blankets.  “What’s funny?”

“Your bathrobe’s plaid.  Crowley said you were magically drawn to plaid patterns in everything you wore, but he was working on that.”

“Did he now?”  Bobby huffed, pretend-indignant.

“He’s coming here soon, isn’t he?”

Bobby hesitated.  Kyra, who bore the “honour” of being the only surviving vessel of Lucifer, well, except Sam, was nearly thirteen years old.  She’d been in his care, and that of Sam and Dean in the bunker, for a little over two months now, and that was no time for recovery from what she had experienced.  She’d been literally pimped out to Lucifer by a black magician who gained control of the girl’s mother, the mother who had died as a result of Lucifer’s possession.  You didn’t really come back from that, in the sense of being what you were before, and he saw no point in making the girl relive whatever she’d dreamed.  But he didn’t believe in lying to a kid either.  Bobby and the others, even Crowley himself, had told her what he was, but the old hunter still wasn’t sure what that meant to her.  To Kyra he was the one who had saved her from the magician and from Lucifer himself, and Bobby could understand why Crowley’s presence made her feel safer.

“He said so, darlin’, but I’m not sure what “soon” means to him.  He’s got some stuff he needs to get done.”   Lucifer, in other words, but Crowley had been keeping pretty close about that, where Lucifer was now.  Against his better judgment, Bobby added, “I’ve got the house warded, Kyra, and nobody’s gonna get the jump on me, even if I am an old guy.”

She sighed a little and emerged a bit more, pushing the covers back.  “I know.  I just wish I knew what was happening.”

“We’re not gonna be in the loop like before.  The boys are doin’ whatever they do, they got Cas and Crowley helping and they’ll sort things out, but we might not know too much until it’s all over.”  Bobby got to his feet.  “Come on, let’s get some hot chocolate.  Or do you want me to bring it in?”

She shook her head and climbed out; clad like him in t-shirt and track pants.  He passed her a bathrobe – blue with yellow flowers on it, seemed to be her favourite colours – and she tied it around her waist as she followed him.  This house was a bungalow; still seemed odd to Bobby not to have an upstairs _or_ a basement.  Garden shed was all, and he couldn’t quite see questioning some demon in that, with the screams and flames and mess there tended to be.  He had yet to meet with Jody’s friend of a friend and find out just what creatures he was expected to deal with out here.  He’d talked the boys into letting him appropriate some of the Men of Letters library, but didn’t remember seeing anything particular to Monsters of California in there.

A sudden crashing sound ahead of them made Bobby halt suddenly and grasp Kyra’s shoulder to push her behind him.  He reached into the pocket of his robe – all he had there was a knife.  Like a damn fool he’d believed his own message that they were safe.  The light from Kyra’s room, and his own, didn’t reach beyond this passage and the kitchen was in darkness.  “Back in your room,”  he whispered, and then the kitchen light came on.

“That you, love?” asked a familiar voice.

Bobby swore with relief, hardly noticing Kyra’s grin, and strode ahead through the kitchen doorway where he found, as expected, a dapper looking demon standing among the wreckage of the ceramic mugs he had knocked off a counter.  Crowley raised a dark eyebrow at him and then smiled as Kyra dashed past Bobby and threw herself at him.  He was _not_ known as a cuddler, given that his and Bobby’s relationship was of recent vintage and kept quiet among the wider circle of hunters and their friends.  But now his arms closed around the girl and he hugged back hard, though his face still wore an expression of “what is happening here and is this what I do?”  Bobby reached them and joined the embrace, kissing Crowley soundly on his cheek.  “What were you gonna do if this was the wrong house, idjit?”  he asked.

“Never happen, love.”  Crowley brushed that aside with a heedless gesture.  “I’m the master of precision.”

“Riiight,” said Bobby, looking at the broken mugs.  He sighed and went to find a dustpan and brush, hearing the murmur of Crowley’s raspy British voice answering Kyra’s shy questions.   When he got back, he found Kyra sorting through one of the unpacked boxes for more mugs.  Crowley watched him tidy up the shards, his usual slight smirk on his face.  “So, you got any progress to report?”  Bobby asked when he was done.  He found the tin of chocolate powder on a high shelf and handed it to Kyra.

The demon crossed his arms, looking thoughtfully at nothing.  Sure sign that he was considering lying, the hunter thought, but if he pushed it, he’d likely get nothing.  “Your boys are hunting the Nephilim,”  he said.

“The baby ain’t even born yet, is he?”

Crowley shrugged.  Bobby checked to see whether Kyra was tracking this, but she was clattering with spoonfuls of chocolate powder in the mugs.

“Castiel’s guarding the mother.  Sounds like the Nephilim was able to control his mind – not that that would be so very difficult – and he’s now fixated on helping it be born.  Gone poof into the ether, darling.  If Lucifer had found them, I’m sure we’d know _that_ by now, so situation same as before.”  The words were light, almost heedless, but Bobby saw the red flickers in Crowley’s eyes.  _He’s on high alert_ , he thought, and had to stop himself from grinding his teeth in frustration at being left out of Sam and Dean’s search.  Without Castiel, why the fuck wouldn’t they ask Crowley for help?  Every moment’s delay helped Lucifer get closer, and that bastard wouldn’t care how many bodies he left in his wake.

They went with Kyra back to her room, bearing the mugs of hot chocolate.  Crowley stayed sipping his while Bobby firmly ordered his ward back to bed and settled the covers around her.  “So domestic, love,”  he commented, but he put the mug down and went to say goodnight.  Kyra whispered something urgently to him and he nodded, answering quietly enough that Bobby couldn’t catch that either.  He yawned deeply on the way back to his room, suddenly intensely glad of the other’s company. 

“You gonna stay awhile?”  he asked as he got back into bed.  Watching Crowley in his damn three piece suit while he was in his sweatpants made him feel kinda underdressed, and also that he might not be getting any tonight.

“Probably not, love,”  Crowley answered,  sipping his drink again and then setting it down on the dresser in favour of pacing slowly about the room.  “I’ve got some of my few useful minions at work tracking Lucy, the unborn nephilim _and_ Castiel, so the word could come at any moment.”

“Well, if you let me know when it does, I could back you up,”  Bobby growled, letting his aggrieved feelings show.

“And leave Kyra on her own?  Really?”

“Fuck you.”

“Well, that _is_ one of my plans…”  Crowley trailed off when he saw Bobby’s look.  He sighed and sat down on the side of Bobby’s bed, pulling off his coat and dropping it on top of the covers. 

“Tell me,”  Bobby said.  He wanted to hold on to his anger, contrariwise, but he wanted to touch Crowley more.  After a moment, the demon shuffled closer and Bobby was able to grip his hand.

“I actually know where Kelly Kline and Castiel are,”  the demon said.  “Sam and Dean are on their way there now, but I refuse to be subjected to their appalling means of travel and they won’t let me port them there.  Have you noticed that both of them have most unreasonable trust issues…”

“Crowley!”

“. . . but I intend to join them shortly after they arrive.  They’re under the impression they’ve blocked me from knowing their whereabouts, but surprise, surprise, they don’t know as much about spells as they believe they do.”

“You’re sayin’ goodbye, aren’t you?  You and the boys have hatched some goddamned half-baked plan and you’re keepin’ me out of it!”

Crowley waited until Bobby finished growling at him and had stopped, or at least paused for breath.  “Yes,”  he said.  “I am.  I could talk about how that child needs you, and so on, but I am still a demon, darling.  _I_ need you.  I need you safe and alive and not in mortal fucking peril beside me.  If I manage it, I’ll come back, but just between you and me, Robert, and I will deny it a thousand times….Lucifer outsmarted me.  I’m good, I’m Crowley, but he’s been alive for millennia and he’s a quite thoroughly damned fallen archangel.”

He looked with fiery eyes at the scruffy hunter sitting up in bed, wearing a faded blue t-shirt that looked gnawed by small rodent wildlife, as did his greying ginger hair.  Looked and measured and committed every inch of him to memory, while Bobby Singer stared at him in shock, hand still gripping his.  After a moment, Bobby remembered to breathe, and drew the air in sharply, then tugged on Crowley’s hand, urging him closer.   “Come here, idjit.”

“Five minutes,”  Crowley said, his gaze moving from Bobby, staring over his shoulder as though tracking something only he could perceive.  But he moved up to sit next to Bobby against the head of the bed, pushing the blankets out of his way with fastidious care.

“So can I put an arm around you or you in too much of a screamin’ hurry?”  Bobby asked, considering him.  Crowley sighed dramatically and leaned to allow Bobby to do that, then settled back against him.  “That’s better.  So, you’re scared of Lucifer?”  Bobby murmured.

“Anyone with any wit is scared of Lucifer.”

Bobby sighed.  If Crowley didn’t want to port him, he wasn’t going, it was that simple.  Probably the demon had waited to tell him until he was already across the country, assuming the woman and Castiel weren’t holed up on the west coast.  “So why are you really here?”

“I told you!”

“I call bullshit,”  the hunter retorted, but he rubbed Crowley’s shoulder, feeling him relax, as he did with no one else.  Then he waited for the other to get tired of silence and start talking, knowing it wouldn’t take long.

“I also need you to let me write you into a spell, darling.”

“Uh huh, and what does that involve?”

“Blood, for a start.”

“Why is it always blood?!  No, no, skip that.  What else?”

“It’s a deal of sorts,”  the demon said, not looking at him.  “But it’s not your blood, and it’s a deal I’m making with you, not you with me.  It’s demonic magic, nothing you’re going to have in that pilfered library of yours, since it predates anything the Men of Letters were able to collect.”

“You’re not makin’ a lot of sense, you know.  How can you make a demonic deal not involvin’ taking a soul?”

“I’m a witch as well as a demon, love, and the deal is only a part of the spell.  Some of it I have to do when I get where I’m going.”

“And what’s the cost to me?  Because I’m _not_ sellin’, lendin’ or rentin’ my goddamned soul to you.”

After Bobby finished speaking, it flashed through his mind that he had perhaps taken that one step too far with Crowley.  The demon turned his head and was practically nose to nose with him, so close that the hunter could see his eyes go red.  “Not asking you to, love.  Just kiss me.”

Bobby did, before realising that asking was not exactly Crowley’s style and that maybe this kiss was more than that.  Crowley kissed him as though trying to remember him, while still in the moment.  Then he murmured something, but the words were no language Bobby knew.  The hunter started to move back, to demand answers, but then there was nothing but empty air in front of him.  Softly, furiously, Bobby Singer cursed, though he already knew it was much too late for Crowley to hear him, and that he had, without needing to speak it, given the demon the permission he wanted.  When he fell silent, he heard the distant rumbling of thunder all around the house, like some huge, dramatic backdrop to Crowley’s visit.

 

 

 


	2. One More Minor Ingredient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronology notes. I have trouble working out the time of the year with Supernatural sometimes, since Sam and Dean seem to wear several layers all the time. I read something indicating that the time of year is supposed to be the same as the original release date of the episode. Sounds good to me. 
> 
> In that case, this story picks up in late May, as everybody closes in on Kelly and the Nephilim and has their show down in the apocalypse Earth. My apologies for any messing around with California’s school system which I commit. I’m an Australian and all I know comes from movies and Googling. I’m very fond of movies such as _Mean Girls_ and _Bring It On_ and, of course, _Buffy the Vampire Slayer._

_Crowley knelt by his fire, putting the spell components together with grim concentration.  Sam Winchester watched over his shoulder with growing panic, muttering at him to hurry up._

_“To deal with that rip, we need one more minor ingredient,”  Crowley retorted._

_“What?”_

_“A life.”_

_The King stood, advancing slowly over the desiccated, sulphurous landscape of another Earth, one where the Winchesters had never been born, and which had never stood a chance.  Lucifer’s eyes widened and he grinned.  “Surprise,”  Crowley said to him, with a sardonic lift of his brows._

_Lucifer laughed, as though he had been ambushed with a surprise birthday party.  “Crowley!  You sneaky little – so I guess I get to kill you twice.”_

_“I doubt it.”_

_“Oh no, no, no, you had your chance.  You could have put me back in the Cage, but you had to make it personal, didn’t you?”_

_Crowley seemed to take this in his stride, unhurried.  “You’re right.  It is personal,”  he agreed cordially.  “You humiliated me.  I hate you.  Deeply.  Truly.  I’m going to enjoy wiping that smug, self satisfied look off your face personally.”_

_Lucifer’s grin widened and he stuck two fingers in each corner of his mouth, pulling his expression into a comic clown smile.  “You mean this one?  Come on, Crowley, you know whatever you try, you’re going to lose.”_

_“You’re right,”  Crowley said again.  He turned his head to look at Sam and Dean with an odd, almost affectionate intensity.  “Bye, boys.”  Again his gaze fixed Lucifer.  “But even when I lose, I win.”_

_And he stabbed the angel blade hard into his own chest._

Dialogue is taken from episode 23:  All Along the Watchtower

*

Bobby Singer woke with a loud gasp, startling even himself.  He hadn’t thought he would sleep.  It was the next night after Crowley’s brief visit.  He and Kyra had taken a walk around the neighborhood during the morning, including a look at the school she would be attending.  It seemed a nice enough place; the kind of town tourists might like, with most shops being family businesses, no intrusive advertising, tidy gardens and so on.  Most homes on the street were single houses, with a small block of flats on the corner.  But he hadn’t been able to muster much enthusiasm for exploring and nor had Kyra, who didn’t say yea or nay about a closer look at the school.

In the end, Bobby took them home and they spent the rest of the day unpacking and shelving books.  He got takeaway from a Mom and Pop type shop;  fish and chips, with icecream for dessert.  Kyra had taken herself off to bed voluntarily, seeming to sense Bobby’s preoccupation.  He’d stationed himself in the living room, waiting for he knew not the hell what, and now rubbed his stiff neck, looking to see what the time was.  Just past one am.  His heart was thumping as though he’d run a mile.  If his dream had been that scary, he’d have thought he would remember it, but his mind was a blank.  “Crowley?” he said quietly, but there was no answer.  He stood up, thinking to check on Kyra, then jumped as there was a quiet knock on the door.

“Hello?” said a husky Southern-sounding voice whose gender he couldn’t immediately identify.  “I can see a light – is someone up?”

Bobby picked up his pistol from where he’d laid it on a bookshelf, above Kyra’s reach, and slipped it into his jacket pocket before advancing to the door.  There was a spyhole, which he put his eye to, seeing first a tall woman with wavy, shoulder length hair in front of the door and behind her, a man with his arm around a third person, who appeared to be naked.  One look at that last made Bobby hurry to unbolt the door and pull it wide.

“We found him on the sidewalk in front of your house,”  the woman said.  “Is he…”

“Yeah, get him in here…please.”

She was done up for a night on the town; tight dress, well above the knee, fancy hair and necklace, lacy blouse showing plenty of cleavage, but only long practice as a hunter would have enabled Bobby to even place her in a police lineup, so cursory was his look over.  She came inside and turned about to watch her friend pass the stumbling, naked man he held over to Bobby, keeping a supportive hold on his arm.  This one, Bobby might have hesitated to allow into his home under other circumstances.  He was fiftyish, lean and intense looking, wearing a leather kutte over a long sleeved black tee and jeans.  There was detailed insignia and a name but Bobby didn’t try to read it, because Crowley picked just then to pass out completely.

“He’s not dead,”  the biker assured Bobby.  “Looks like somebody had a good try, but that must have been days ago; the wound’s closed.”  He made a move as though to assist Bobby in picking Crowley up, but the hunter waved him off, not liking the idea of Crowley’s reaction if he half woke up again and retaliated demonically.  Hoping he wouldn’t do something embarrassing like bust his back, Bobby awkwardly lifted Crowley and deposited him quickly on the couch before kneeling to examine the wound indicated.

This was just below Crowley’s heart and looked like the kind of damage a knife shoved up under the ribs would cause.  Not normally something you survived, when done right.   But the biker was right;  the demon was breathing slowly and regularly, the faint fluttering of his eyelids showing that he was rising out of unconsciousness into simple sleep.  The chest wound – Bobby frowned – it looked maybe 24 hours old, but Crowley had been here then and surely hadn’t been injured.  It was healed over but very raw.  He stood, looking over at the two strangers, trying to formulate some sort of explanation to get them out of the house without too much mystery.

“Look, thanks,”  he said awkwardly.  “He, uh, didn’t know what he was doing.  He got in a fight a coupla days ago, got hit on the head, so I been trying to keep an eye on him, but I fell asleep.”

The blue-eyed biker nodded, as though finding an injured man under such circumstances was nothing unusual.  “No problem.  We didn’t hear anybody drive up, which is kinda weird…”

“Tig!” the woman chided, her voice a pleasant, deep Southern drawl.  “He wasn’t dumped on the sidewalk after a hit.  He was injured and feverish and just stumbled outside, that’s all.”  She smiled at Bobby.  “I’m Venus van Dam; I live at the flats at the corner, so we’re neighbors.  Tig, introduce yourself properly.”

“Tig Trager,”  the biker said, obediently shaking Bobby’s hand.  His curiosity was evident as he looked from the hunter to Crowley.

Bobby sighed.  He’d been debating with himself how he was going to present to people here; maybe as a single man, grandfather of a young girl, with a visiting buddy from out of town or what, but looked like Crowley had just nixed his chances of that – some of that - being believed.  He looked at the woman, as being hopefully an easier person to confront.  She was as tall as he was and strongly built.  A second later, Bobby realised the truth as she raised her chin a little and he spotted an unmistakeable adam’s apple.  She met his eyes squarely, with a touch of defiance, obviously aware of his inspection and realisation.

“Bobby Singer, ma’am,”  the hunter said politely.  “This is my partner, Fergus Crowley.”

She smiled.  “Glad to meet you, Bobby.”

“Bobby?”

And that was all they needed, of course;  Kyra to wake up and hear the voices.  She stood sleepily in the doorway, her bathrobe loose around her, until she spotted Crowley on the couch and cried out.

“No, no, darlin’ – he’s not, ah….”

With what Bobby had to call chivalry, or close to it, Trager took the filmy scarf Venus handed him and draped it deftly over Crowley’s middle before anything could be discerned by Kyra.

“Go grab a blanket for him,”  Bobby told Kyra, who disappeared.  “Foster child,”  he mumbled.  “Kyra.”

“She’s a sweetheart,”  Venus said, sounding sincere.  Kyra came back with the blanket, which Bobby tucked around Crowley, looking to see whether he was waking up.  It didn’t appear so, though Crowley was excellent at faking sleep.  Reluctantly, he introduced Kyra to his two good samaritans.  She nodded shyly at them but didn’t say anything. 

“Tig and Venus found Crowley outside,”  Bobby told her, hoping the child had enough native caution after the time she’d spent with hunters, not to blurt anything out, until he could convey the story he’d told.  “I nodded off and he must’ve wandered past me not knowing what he was doing.”

“I was asleep too,” was all Kyra said.  She went to the couch and crouched beside Crowley, staring into his face.  She raised a hand to tap his cheek but Bobby made a hushing sound and joined her.

“No, let him sleep,”  he said.  “I’ll keep an eye on him;  better if we don’t move him.”

“I can give you a hand,”  Tig offered.

Bobby hesitated.  Honesty was one thing, but letting these two see what was plainly a shared room…and bed. 

“C’mon, honey, he’ll wake with an awfully stiff neck if he stays there,”  Venus said gently.  “Tig can help you,  and your little girl and I can get acquainted.”  Bobby, seeing no option, awkwardly nodded and heard Venus asking Kyra her age and what grade she was in at school, as he and Tig did the shifting.  Crowley was genuinely out, he decided; he wouldn’t have stayed faking through the lifting – Bobby at his shoulders and Tig at his feet – especially not after Bobby knocked Crowley’s head against the door jamb getting him into the bedroom.  The biker asked no questions, simply followed Bobby’s lead in getting Crowley to the bed and sorting him out.  Bobby retrieved the blanket once it was no longer required and tossed it over the covers, which he pulled up carefully around Crowley.  He stared at the demon’s bearded face, for once quiet in sleep, and wished to hell his helpful visitors would get themselves gone.

“If you need a doctor, I know somebody who’s discreet,”  Tig said from the doorway.  “She, uh, she’s our Vice President’s old lady.”

“Thanks, but he’ll be fine.”

“Okay.”  Tig withdrew and Bobby, desperately wanting to stay, knew he had to go see them out if they were to believe this was no more than a concussed fever wandering.  He looked at the man’s back, saw a gothic looking image of a figure with a scythe, and the lettering over the black leather:  Sons of Anarchy.  Marks of a one per center club, if he’d ever seen them.  He didn’t know why Tig had decided they might need the services of a “discreet” doctor and thought it was probably better that way.

Finally, finally they were out the door and Bobby leaned on it, swearing softly, until Kyra came up behind him, saying that Crowley was awake.  They hastened in, finding him propped against the pillows.  “Hello, love,”  he greeted Bobby.  “And you, darling.  Who were your friends?”

“So you were awake,”  Bobby growled.

“Only for the last few seconds,”  the demon conceded.

“Our new neighbor and her date,”  the hunter informed him.  “They found you starkers on the sidewalk and decided to check if you belonged in the house nearest.”  He reached for the covers, pulled them down a little to examine Crowley’s chest.  “What is this?  What the fuck happened to you?”  When Crowley didn’t answer, he sighed and glanced around, finding Kyra sitting on the bed.  “Sorry ‘bout the language, kid.  I guess you’d better get used to it;  I’m too old to change now.  And since when were _you_ worried about what Kyra hears from you?”

“Since it concerns someone she probably doesn’t want to hear about,”  Crowley said, his tone flat. 

“Is he dead?”  Kyra asked hopefully.

“Better than that,”  the demon said, giving up.  “He’s trapped in an alternate reality where things went to hell – in a manner of speaking – much more than they have here.  Depressing Road Warrior sort of place.  Would you happen to have some whisky around, love?”

“Why can’t you magic it up along with your fancy suit?”  Bobby grumbled.  “You’re not drinkin’ booze until I know what’s goin’ on with you and that you’re not concussed.  Kyra, can you make him some tea?  Plenty of sugar.”

Crowley grimaced as the girl dashed out.  “Robert, I hate sugar in tea.”

“What happened?  And start by tellin’ me what went down with that spell you said you wanted to set up with me.  I woke up just now before Venus knocked on the door, felt like I was gonna have a heart attack for a moment there, then the feelin’ vanished and I heard her callin’ out.”  Bobby reached for his hand, pressed his fingers to Crowley’s wrist.  “Your pulse is okay, but you don’t seem like you usually do, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

“Well, I died earlier tonight, so that might account for it.”

Bobby looked carefully into his eyes.  “You focusing all right now?  Any other injuries?”

“Robert, I’m not delusional.  I had to make sure that Lucifer was trapped beyond the rift created by the Nephilim and that required a life.  So I stabbed…”

“Did you hurt Sam or Dean?”  Bobby’s tone was suddenly very grim and very dangerous and Crowley felt something cold against his throat.  He did not need to look down to know that the hunter had produced a knife and that the sharp end was towards him.

“I stabbed myself in the heart,”  he said, very quiet, very careful.  “You want something done right, blah, blah.  No, I did not hurt Sam or Dean.  I would not do that and if you believe I would, we are done talking, Bobby Singer.   As I was saying, the spell required a life, but there’s nothing in the rule book that says a death has to be permanent, though they generally are unless the witch or sorcerer has put an advance safeguard in place…”

“I was the safeguard,”  Bobby blurted.  “That right?”

“Yes, love.  I linked myself to your lifeline and when I died, that triggered a reboot and brought me to you, or was supposed to bring me to you.  Outside in the street is probably close enough for government work, and it wasn’t something I could exactly test beforehand.”

Kyra came in, carefully bearing a cup and saucer.  “I Googled it,”  she said.

“You Googled how to make tea properly?”  Crowley asked and she nodded.  He beamed and she smiled back, still uncertain.  “Let’s see then.”  He sipped while she watched and Bobby, remembering his comment about the sugar, also watched, but Crowley only said, “Nice job.  Next time, use honey with just a splash of milk.”

“You head off to bed now,”  Bobby told Kyra.  “Go on, you’ve seen he’s all right and I’ve got to get some sleep myself.”

Once they were alone, he turned the light down and undressed, neither he nor Crowley speaking, until Bobby got into the bed and turned off the remaining light, before taking the demon carefully in his arms, quite surprised that Crowley allowed it.  He stroked Crowley’s back for a while, needing just to touch him, to know his reality, while Crowley pressed against him, his face against the hunter’s neck.  “What happened?”  Bobby asked again, very softly.  “C’mon.  All of it.”

Crowley told him.  The rift and the apocalypse world;  the Winchesters and the angel.  And the fallen archangel come to claim his son.  “I trapped him,”  Crowley whispered.  “The rift closed and Lucifer is on the other side of it.”

“What happened to Sam and Dean and Cas?”

“No idea, love, I was out of the picture.  I don’t even know how much time passed, whether it passed the same in the alternate world or not.  Once the death was given, the second half of the spell triggered and I was pulled back here.”

Smooth as ever, Bobby thought, but he was sure there was a lot more here to know, if he could only work out the right questions.  “This lifeline stuff,”  he said, “what the hell does that mean?  That I brought you back from the dead without knowin’ it?”  Crowley shifted a little and Bobby’s hands slid along his back.  Petting him, comforting him, and receiving comfort himself.

“It’s a bit more than that,”  Crowley said softly, consideringly.  “It’s last ditch magic.  Drop everything and run.  Thing is, it’s magic for a human – well, a witch human – so I’m not exactly sure what it’s done to me.  But I can’t sense hell now, Robert.  I was always aware of it, like somebody on the other end of a rope we’re both holding.  It’s part of being a demon and even more of being the King.  Now, it’s you I’m linked to.”

“You’re creepin’ me out here.”

“Try being me,”  Crowley complained back, but he cuddled willingly closer when Bobby hugged him, letting the hunter stroke his head.  “It’s nothing bad, darling, not for you.  It doesn’t change anything for you.”

“And you?”  Bobby didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to put this truth out there, but after a moment he added, “What happens to you when I – ain’t here anymore?”

“I’m not sure, love, but I think – I think I go when you do.”

“Shit, Crowley!”

“I don’t think that’s bad, love,”  the raspy voice near his ear went on thoughtfully. “But do be careful when you cross the street, won’t you?”

“Ha,”  Bobby muttered, letting his eyes close.  He was so tired and oddly enough, Crowley seemed to be tired as well.  This was the longest they’d ever been together in bed without more happening and it felt, well, it felt kinda nice, to have someone this close to him, skin to skin, just warm and sleepy and relieved to be here.  Tomorrow, tomorrow he’d have to call the boys, try to get some more substance to this insane tale from the demon.  Even for the King of Hell; a portal to another reality was a stretch…a reality that now supposedly held Lucifer.

He was supposed to get Kyra enrolled in school tomorrow as well.

*

Morning rolled around way too soon, but at least when he woke, Bobby found Crowley still beside him.  Staring right into his eyes, which wasn’t creepy at all.  “What are you doing?” he finally asked.

“Never mind, it didn’t work,”  was all he got.  Bobby disentangled himself, yawning a little, beginning to run through his mind the things he needed to do.  He got up, gathering his clothes together, gave Crowley another look just to make sure he was still there, he told himself, and headed off to the shower.  The demon was gone when he came back to the room afterwards, and he pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket and hit the call button for Dean.  He couldn’t hear anyone talking and had almost convinced himself the demon had zapped off somewhere when Crowley came back, buttoning his usual crisp black shirt.

“Dean?” Bobby asked when he heard a mutter at the other end.  “C’mon, it’s not that early.”

“Don’t tell him!”  Crowley hissed a second later, almost glaring. 

Bobby rolled his eyes but nodded, as Dean managed to form words at the other end.  _“Bobby, is that you?”_

“Yeah, it’s Bobby.  Just, uh, thought I’d check in, see how you’re goin’ with everything.”

_“It’s not a good time, Bobby.”_

“Are you and Sam okay?”

_“Yeah, we are, but no one else is.  I’ll call you.”_

The phone went dead and Bobby looked at it, then at Crowley, who was turning the top drawer inside out searching for something.  Probably his tie.  “Look at the doorknob,”  he advised.  The demon did, flashing him a grin as he whisked the silver paisley tie into his hand.  Bobby watched him tie it, using the moments to organise his thoughts.  “Dean sounds like somebody died,”  he said quietly.  “He said he and Sam are all right, which means something could’ve happened to Cas.”

“Or the girl?”  Crowley offered, but Bobby shook his head.

“Dean hardly knows her and he _is_ used to losing people.  It ain’t that.”

“Grief over my passing?”  Crowley commented.  His tone was light, as though it hardly mattered, though Bobby wondered whether that was true.  Crowley’s relationship with Sam and Dean was hardly that of any other demon, and it was true that they had given him passes which they would have allowed no other denizen of hell.

“They would miss you,”  Bobby informed him.  “And I don’t mean like a freaking accident at the shooting range.  Now, I got to take Kyra along to that school and sign her up, since thanks to Venus, I now know the kids here are still in school until first of July, not finishing in a few days like the schools in Kansas.  I do not need a curious truant officer pokin’ around.  Then I better chase up this cop with the security guard job and find out what I’m supposed to be securing and what from.”  He noted that Crowley was staring at him intently again and did his best to keep going. “So, uh, do you want to – are you _all right_ , Crowley?  Crowley?”  Suddenly a bit shaken, he went to him and put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder.  “You’re shaking.”

“I don’t know,”  Crowley rasped.  “Something’s not right – I just feel fucking cold!”  Bobby touched his face, realising that Crowley’s skin did feel chilled, something he couldn’t remember ever happening.

“I think you better go back to bed,”  he said worriedly.  “I know, I know, you don’t need anyone fussing over you, if you even know what that is, but humour me, all right?  Take off that damn suit and get back in and I’ll bring you some tea, or Kyra will, since she’s the one actually Googled how it’s supposed to be made.”

“No,”  Crowley said very quietly, confusing Bobby for the moment, until he added, “I don’t know what that’s like.”

“Okay,”  Bobby said, “then you’ll do it?  No, come have breakfast with us first if you’re able.”  He smiled wryly at the demon, brushing at his elegant coat.  “You know people will talk if they see you dressed like that around town?”

“And they don’t talk now?”

“Not yet but they will,”  Bobby said, more grimly than he had intended.

At breakfast, both Crowley and Kyra were uncharacteristically quiet.  At least, Crowley was.  When Bobby had first met Kyra, she’d been almost offensively chatty but that, of course, had been Lucifer himself, play-acting as he test drove his new vessel.  Then the girl, when she got control of her body back, had been severely traumatised by her experiences and though the following two months had helped her calm somewhat, she had not recovered.  The hunter was certain of that, but he had no real idea how to help, except protect and give her a chance to heal through time.  It was possible that none of them had yet seen the true person.  She also didn’t much like the idea of school, Bobby suspected.

Kyra had been homeschooled for a time while in the town of Winterridge, which her mother had thought was a refuge from an abusive partner, and ended up being the worst of leaps from saucepan to fire, but when Lucifer was summoned there by his minion, Dr Jeff Watkins, all pretense of a normal life had quickly evaporated.  Kyra hadn’t been in charge of her own body for most of it, certainly not once Lucifer destroyed her mother and then turned his attention to her.

“Do you know what grade you’ll be in?”  Bobby asked her hopefully, watching her push cereal around with a spoon but not eating much of it.

“I was in seventh grade in Kansas City,”  Kyra answered.  “It’s almost the end of the school year, Bobby;  they won’t want me to start now.”

“In Kansas, yeah, but you got a month to go here, kiddo, so Venus said, and that means we need to chat to the school principal.  The way to make sure people don’t wonder about you is to keep the little rules,”  Bobby told her. 

“You could teach me.”

Crowley coughed and Bobby glared at him.  “Got a comment, have you?”

“Absolutely not, love.  I think you’d do a wonderful job.”

“Better than somebody whose last experiences of education was somewhere in the damn Dark Ages.”

“Seventeen hundreds, darling, and it was a charity school attached to a workhouse, but I see your point.”

“ _Sorry,”_ Bobby mouthed, grimacing, but Crowley only reached over and patted his hand.  Both of them were distracted, the hunter realised;  Crowley’s remarks were as much reflex as his own, but no matter what was going on in the world of monsters, the day to day still needed to be dealt with.  He turned to Kyra.  “Well, get yourself together and we’ll walk over there.  You clear on your story?”  She nodded.  “We’ll practise on the way.  See you later, Crowley, unless you want to come along?”  _Please no_ , he thought, and to his relief the demon shook his head.  He gave no explanation and was still sitting there at the table, grimly silent, when Bobby and Kyra left the house.


	3. The King Has Left The Building

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got hooked on Sons of Anarchy fairly recently, which is why Bobby, Crowley and Kyra ended up in their town. This fic is set very vaguely in the early seasons of SOC, but doesn't follow that show's storyline. Venus, for instance, didn't appear until much later on.

 

“I got to tell them,”  Bobby said.

They had had to wait until Kyra was safely in bed;  Crowley might not care, but Bobby drew the line here.  It had been an uncomfortable day.  To Bobby’s thinking; the local Middle School was all right, maybe not great, but surviveable, and the principal hadn’t reacted at all to the advent of a pupil who clearly was not the genetic child of the older man who brought her to enrol.  Mixed race might not be the issue it had been in Bobby’s own schooldays, but same sex parents certainly could be, depending on who you asked.   But Miz Kate Ellins, principal of Charming Middle School,  saw and accepted without fuss and agreed with Bobby that a month was a long time to stay out of school and that coming in now would give Kyra a chance to settle in with her new yearmates before beginning eighth grade.  She examined the forged school records – based on Kyra’s actual marks as near as she could remember – and signed her up for the eighth grade at the start of the new school year.

Kyra was not exactly of the same mind as to starting school right away,  and had gloomed for the rest of the day, so that she, Bobby _and_ Crowley were relieved when her bedroom door closed, hopefully for the rest of the night.

Now, Bobby prepared for bed, while Crowley watched him from the window, hands deep in his coat pockets.  He hadn’t been in any better spirits when Bobby and Kyra had returned earlier, but Bobby had let him be, having other things on his mind.  The demon made no response to Bobby’s declaration, even when the hunter looked towards him.

“They’re gonna be wonderin’ whether to tell me about you,”  he pointed out.  “Probably why Dean was so weird…don’t say it!  Part of it, anyway.  And you said yourself, you don’t know what went down when you, uh, had to leave.”

The demon shrugged slightly.  Bobby decided to take that as an “I don’t care” and took out his phone, sitting on his bed to make the call.    He tried Dean again first and then when there was no answer, Sam.  He was about to give up when Sam finally answered, sounding tired and defeated, which rattled Bobby.  “Sam, it’s Bobby,”  he said.  “Don’t hang up, okay?  Dean hung up on me and now he won’t answer.”

 _“Yeah, I know,”_   Sam said.

“First I got some news for you,”  Bobby said quickly into the heavy silence.  “I know some of what happened to you because Crowley told me.”  Sam started to speak, confusion clear in his voice, but Bobby overrode him.  “Hear me out, Sam.  I know Crowley stabbed himself – I know he died – but he had a spell set up that brought him back.  To me.  But he could only tell me what happened up to that point.  He said this “rift” closed, trapping Lucifer.  He didn’t know what happened to the rest of you guys.  That’s what I’m tryin’ to find out from you.”

 _“No,”_   Sam said dully.  _“Lucifer got out behind us.  Behind Cas.  He stabbed him to death and then he teleported.  With the child.  I went to help Kelly, but it was too late.  She was dead.”_

“She gave birth to the Nephilim?”

_“Yeah.  Alone in the house while we were trying to destroy Lucifer.  Even Crowley tried.  That he had some way set up to save himself, yeah, that doesn’t surprise me, Bobby, but he tried.  Lucifer was just too strong and too quick.”_

“Focus, Sam,”  Bobby said urgently.  “Are you sure Lucifer took the child?”

 _“She gave birth_ ,”  Sam repeated, _“and there was no sign of any baby.  It ripped her open, Bobby_ …”  Revulsion was clear in his voice and Bobby looked towards Crowley.

“Hang on a moment, Sam,”  he said.  “Crowley, could you get me over there?  I need to see Sam and Dean.”

No answer.  Bobby frowned;  this was just weird.  Even when he was angry, Crowley didn’t stop talking, but now, not even any drama, he just didn’t respond.  The hunter put the phone down and stalked across the room, wishing he was still wearing his jeans.  Pants helped.  “Crowley, come on, talk to me.”  That got a look, finally, as Sam’s voice buzzed out from the phone, calling Bobby’s name with increasing degrees of confusion and then irritation.

“I can’t,”  Crowley rasped, looking away from him again.

“You can’t?  What, you can’t zap us over there?  Or you mean you don’t want to?  Hang on, I got to talk to Sam.”  He retrieved the phone, turning his back on Crowley.  “Sorry, Sam.  Tryin’ to get some sense outa Crowley.”

_“He really is there with you?”  Can you ask him if there’s anything he can do for Cas?”_

“Crowley!”  Bobby growled.  Again he threw down the phone, went back to Crowley and grabbed him by his tie.  Something had occurred to him that he desperately hoped wasn’t true, even as he gripped Crowley’s shoulder with his other hand and shook him.  Anger flashed in Crowley’s eyes, but no glints of red, no demonic flames.  He shoved at Bobby’s hands, but no telekinetic fury backed up his movements.  Bobby, who had fully expected to be hitting the opposite wall about now, let Crowley push him off and stood regarding him in sudden understanding.

“Your powers – you can’t use ‘em.”

“I’m cut off from Hell,”  Crowley snarled.  “The connection is down, you might say, and the King is offline.  And it is fucking cold in here.”

At that, Bobby was truly startled.  It might be a bit cooler than the norm for California in May - people he’d spoken to at the school had remarked on that -  but Crowley’s reaction seemed overly intense.  He was still in his suit as well, even though Bobby was down to shorts and singlet.  _He’s experiencing some kinda reaction to that damn spell, that was never meant for a demon,_   he decided.  He reached out to Crowley again, not hurrying this time, pulling the man gently against him and hugging him hard.  “We’ll sort it out,”  he said gently.  “You’re not on your own, you got me.  Maybe I’m not much but anyway….”

Crowley kissed him, fumbling against his neck.  “You’re a sight more than that, Robert,”  he whispered fiercely.  Bobby’s phone abruptly began to ring.  Sam, he judged, had lost patience.  “That’ll be the Moose trying to get your attention again,”  Crowley added.  He moved back, gave Bobby an unreadable look, then left the room by the usual human means of opening a door, walking through, and closing it again.  If Bobby had wanted more proof of what Crowley was saying, he decided he had it.  Crowley loved the game of just teleporting in on him, whenever he took the fancy, and zapping out again when he got bored.

“Sorry,”  Bobby said heavily into the phone.  “Crowley’s having some dramas.  Seems he left a few things behind after his two-second death, like his ability to teleport around the place.  I was tryin’ to get him to bring me over to you.”

“ _Thanks, Bobby, but there’s nothing you can do.  And if he can’t…”_

“He can’t.  I’m sure he’s not screwin’ around about what happened.  Uh, so where’s Cas now?”

“ _He’s in one of the bedrooms.  His vessel isn’t decaying.”_

“Is it supposed to?”

“ _How should I know?”_

“Well, haven’t you seen dead angels before?”

“ _Yeah, but either the bodies disappeared or we weren’t around long enough to find out.  That’s what Dean’s doing.  Trying to find an angel to ask, I mean, but I figure the word’s got out about Lucifer being free.  I think they’ve all bolted for home and pulled up the drawbridge.  Not that Heaven has one, but you know what I mean.”_

“So you’re in that hole on your own?”

_“If by hole, you mean the bunker, then yeah.  I’m trying to find something in the lore, but so far nothing.  If you want to help, you could go through the books you took with you.”_

“Sure, Sam, I’ll do that.”  In amongst my hunter duties here, holdin’ the hand of a freaked out King of Hell and helpin’ a middle schooler navigate the system.  Something else occurred to him.  “Hey, Sam, since you spent a couple of years over here, you might know the answer to something.  Ever hear of a motorcycle gang called the Sons of Anarchy?”  He expected a long suffering grumble along the lines of Sam having spent most of his California time inside Stanford University, not out in the sticks, but instead there was silence.

“ _Uh, Bobby – what did you say the town you were in was called?”_

“Charming.  Little burg with about 14,000 people, tops.  And this motorcycle gang.  Don’t think they hang around Silicon Valley much, but I wondered whether you might have heard of ‘em.  Never mind, it’s not…”

“ _Bobby, you have to stay clear of the Sons.  Don’t have anything to do with them.  Don’t let them notice you.”_

Bobby paused for a moment at the tension that had entered Sam’s voice.  “Sam, last time I heard you sound like that, you were about to drink a few buckets of demon blood and take on Lucifer.  These biker dudes are just human, right?  I know they’re human, in fact; met one of them and his date the other night.”  Sam did not need to know the circumstances.

“ _Yeah, they’re human, but just remember what I said, all right?”_

“Sam, I’m not a clueless frat boy bein’ hazed by escapees from _Easy Rider_ – no offence – I can look out for myself.  I’ll get to work on that research and let you know the minute I find something, or think of anything.  Tell Dean to give me a call;  I want his take on things.”

“ _Okay_ ,”  Sam said, but Bobby could hear in his voice that he did not regard Bobby’s directive as anything urgent.  He had moved away, out of their orbit, and in some ways, he had never truly come back to being what he and the Winchesters had been before, which was family.  They had had a handful of awkward weeks following Bobby’s return and the routing of Lucifer.  Only temporary routing, as it turned out, and now Sam and Dean no longer had any faith in him.  Or anything, probably.  God had come back, then taken off once more.  Lucifer had risen from Hell and played his damned games with them, had eluded the best trap Crowley and the boys could set for him, and now, Bobby couldn’t even guess what Lucifer might be doing.  He had his Nephilim child.  He had killed an angel and crippled a demon, and his was the next move.

“ _Goodbye, Bobby,”_   Sam added and hung up before Bobby could say anything more.  So he tossed the phone into a corner of the room and went to bed.

*

Kyra had refused a ride to school, or even an escort.  She knew the way, she said, though both she and Bobby knew that wasn’t the point.  She instinctively knew the rules he only dimly remembered:  She had to go in on her own.  She had to meet and get through whatever hazing greeted her and she had to find her own place in the jungle which was the middle school world.  All he could do was try to make sure she had the things which she would need and be a refuge for when she got home.

“You can’t meet me afterwards,”  she reminded him at the door and Bobby nodded seriously.

“Don’t let anybody sneak up behind you.  Stay alert.”

She nodded solemnly back.  “Low profile.”

“That’s right, kid.  See you in a few hours.”

After the door shut, Bobby let out a faint groan and turned to look at Crowley, who was leaning against a counter, having exchanged his own farewell with Kyra while Bobby was busy with breakfast.  He hadn’t been able to hear much but it was something about “watch the eyes.”  “This is worse than a hunt,”  he muttered.  “Now I’m gonna be worryin’ about how she’s getting on all day until she gets back.  Who would ever do this to themselves voluntarily?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,”  Crowley responded.  “Don’t you have an appointment with a police officer?”

“Yeah, I’m meeting him outside the station.  Wayne Unser, the sheriff.  You got any plans?”

“Yes,”  Crowley said, straightening up and brushing his coat.  “I’m going to make sure there’s nothing in that school that shouldn’t be there.”

“But if you can’t ‘port….”

“I may be temporarily inconvenienced as to demonic powers, love, but I’m still a witch.  Go on and meet your sheriff;  I’ll make sure Kyra is fine.  She won’t know I’m even there, trust me.”

*

There was a motorcycle outside the police station when Bobby got there.  He parked a few spaces from it and paused to admire the gleaming steel monster as he walked past.  “Somebody takes real good care of you,”  he said to it, turning a bit reluctantly to head inside to find his contact. 

“Thanks,” said the blond younger man standing there, startling Bobby, who had had no idea he wasn’t alone.  “You ride?”

“Not for more years than I care to think about,”  Bobby admitted.  He privately considered motorcycles an unnecessarily prolonged way to suicide;  if you really wanted to kill yourself, there were many better ways.  But he wasn’t going to say that to an outlaw biker, which the man before him clearly was.  He wore the same black kutte as Tig had, but the lettering on his said VICE PRESIDENT.  Awkwardly, Bobby held out his hand.  “I’m Bobby Singer, just moved here from Ohio.”  And maybe one day he'd be able to say that without thinking of Sioux Falls.

“Yeah, Tig said he’d run into you,”  the biker said, shaking his hand.  “I’m Jax Teller.  Your partner doing okay now?”

Inwardly, Bobby tensed.  He hadn’t expected the meeting to be talked over by Tig’s gang, but evidently the bikers did report such minutae to their leaders.  Teller was younger than Bobby would have thought someone in his position to be;  probably around Sam’s age, even with shaggy blond hair that made Bobby think even more of Sam.  He exuded confidence verging on aggression, a general air of being willing to take anybody on, and he looked Bobby in the eyes as he waited for his answer.  _Alpha wolf, aren’t you?_ the hunter thought, and wondered whether the club’s number one wasn’t a tiny bit anxious about having this one in the number two slot.

“He’s good,”  he confirmed awkwardly.  He hadn’t ever thought of bikers as being among society’s most enlightened, but this man didn’t seem bothered by the implications of Bobby’s home life.  “Tig and Venus were great.”  Then again, if one of his gang was dating a transgender woman, it wasn’t like a gay couple were going to be a huge shock to him.   “Ah – I hope the whole town doesn’t know Fergus had a small episode….”  _And if he doesn’t like being known as Fergus, too bad.  He should’ve picked a proper undercover name._

Jax Teller’s grin widened.  “No, just me and Clay know.  Clay’s my stepfather and the club president of Sons of Anarchy,”  he added.  “I forget you don’t know this stuff;  everyone in town knows who we are.”  He glanced around at the police station and Bobby, following the look, saw a man in police uniform and the badge of a sheriff, come out on to the steps and wave to him.  “You a friend of Unser?”

“More friend of a friend,”  Bobby said, unable to see any way to not answer.  “He’s helping me get some security work around here.”  He found it interesting that he wanted to answer Jax, to get along with him.  The biker had charisma, that was for sure;  he reminded Bobby quite strongly of Dean, but unlike Dean, he was using that charisma to show this stranger who mattered in the territory he had entered. 

Jax nodded and moved past him to the bike, unslinging the helmet which had rested atop the seat.  “Sounds good.  You take care.”

“You too,”  Bobby muttered back as he turned his attention to Unser, who shot Jax a weary look and then held a hand out to his guest.

“You must be Bobby Singer.  I’m Wayne Unser, sheriff, at least until I convince the powers that be to finally let me retire.”  No alpha wolf here, Bobby thought, though that didn’t mean this man was anything of a pushover.  You couldn’t be a police chief somewhere like this town, with a club like the Sons in it, if you were weak.  He was shorter than Bobby, about his age and not physically powerful, but his gaze met Bobby’s, studying him thoughtfully as they shook.

“That’s right,”  he confirmed.  “Thanks for meeting me.  I appreciate the help with sorting out work here.”

Unser nodded, a faint smile on his face.  He and Bobby studied one another, each waiting for the other to take the next step.  Finally the sheriff said, “It’s about time we had a hunter come to Charming.  For some reason you people seem to avoid us, and I have my hands full just dealing with the humans here.”  He watched Jax kick his bike into roaring life and ride off with practised grace, giving Bobby a bit of time to adjust to what he had said.  “Come on, let’s have a chat inside.”

Inside the sheriff’s office, Bobby settled warily into the visitor’s chair on the other side of a desk crowded with paperwork.  “Wasn’t sure how much you actually knew,”  he admitted, “given the way the news got to me.”  That had been via Jody, of course, but her colleague in Sioux Falls only knew that Jody was “into weird shit” and had heard from his contact in the cop grapevine, who had met Unser at a police funeral, of all places, that Unser was looking for people to do security work.  Not sworn officers, but loosely attached to the sheriff’s office, was how it had been put.  “For all I knew, you could’ve had a barn full of tractors you needed somebody to watch.”

Wayne Unser smiled.  “It’s not tractors, and I hope I could’ve filled a job like that locally.  Sounds like you crossed the country on not a lot of intel, Bobby Singer.  Jody Mills said good things about you, when I got in direct touch with her.  Said you’d been off the grid for a few years, but nobody could match your knowledge.”

“That’s good to hear.”  Bobby looked at him directly.  “So what’s your problem?  Werewolf bikers?”

“Ha.  The Sons would eat werewolves.  No – I think it’s ghouls.  One of the problems is ghouls, anyway.”  He sorted through the files on his desk, gathering one up with both hands, and deposited it in front of Bobby.  “This is missing persons over the last five years, all the ones that were never found.  I’ve marked the ones I _don’t_ think were the victims of hits, or biker deals gone wrong or whatever the fuck else.  This one’s just about weird crap that’s gone on in the graveyard over the last twelve months.  Like I told you;  hunters don’t come here.  It’s like Charming is a big exclusion zone, and I don’t think it’s just because of our local bikers.  I’ve been trying to find out why that’s the case for years, but I guess I don’t know the right questions to ask.  I work with the Sons because I have to, just to keep this town functioning, but there’s still things they won’t tell me.  They could know about some of the supernatural goings on, but they’re not gonna pass that to me.  So no, it’s not a barn full of tractors, it’s the whole damn town.”

He looked relieved to have it all out in the open, Bobby noted.  “Anyone else here know about stuff like this?”  he asked.  “Any other cops, any civilians you know?”

“If any other cops know, they haven’t shared it,”  Unser said.  “Ditto the townsfolk, though if you can find a way to ask the Sons about it, they’d be my first guess.”

“What do the Sons do here?  Officially, unofficially?”

“Officially they’re mechanics;  they run Teller Morrow, named for two of the club founders.  Unofficially, it’s guns.  They keep drugs out of Charming, so they say.  Well, hard drugs.  Bud isn’t a drug far as they’re concerned.”  Bobby shrugged;  he didn’t favour anything that was going to confuse his mind, but that was by the by. 

“How do you want to do this?”  he asked.  Unser pushed a piece of paper towards him.  Bobby looked at it;  it was a contract of employment with the town, offering part time duties as a security guard, location unspecified.  Could as well be a drive around, he thought.  He just hoped his ID, set up by Sam, passed muster and any administrative hiccups caused by his death.  The pay wasn’t terrific, but they’d manage, and it would be useful _not_ to rely completely on the fake credit card system the boys used.  That kind of thing tended to catch up with you if you stayed in one place.

“Some of this will be legit,”  the sheriff said, almost apologetically.  “I’ll give you a list of businesses who want somebody to drive around and check on stuff, but don’t want to pay to have some guy there all night.  And sometimes the police department will want to hire on a few extras, say when there’s a march or a protest in town or shit like that.  You might have to do a few training days and such.”

“That’s fine.”  With a few more pleasantries, they were done, and Unser walked Bobby outside again.  “So what do I do if I show up at some place and find some bikers already there?”  Bobby asked.

The sheriff shrugged.  “Keep driving.”


	4. Yellow Eyed Boy

 

This was another school;  that was all you could say about it.  You walked in there and you got your locker assignment from the office and you felt all the curious stares on you, the newcomer, so oddly here in the last few weeks of term.  It was kind of a relief that they were all strangers;  the bullies unknown for the time being.  They would make themselves known in the coming days, they always did.  Kyra had moved through several schools since she began her education, something she hadn’t told Bobby, and that kind of thing always attracted bullies to you.  She kept as much to herself as she could, not sure why.  It just felt safer.

The scrutiny didn’t ease up when she got to home room class and gave her slip of paper to the teacher, a Ms Archer, who was obviously curious about why she was showing up this late in the school year, but pointed her to a desk without fuss.  It was in the unpopular front row, and Kyra’s neck prickled with awareness of the curious seventh graders around her.  _And I actually know what to be scared of,_ she thought.  Having the other kids there was good;  it meant any monster would probably go for them first and give her warning.  She looked at her schedule, carefully memorising the room numbers and times so she wouldn’t get lost when everybody rushed for the door in a human flood.

She was smart.  Smart enough to know it and keep quiet about it, despite the upheavals of her home life,  She thought hiding out in libraries had helped her with that.  The teacher was making some sort of announcement that ended with a request for everybody to help Kyra Singer out until she got settled.  At least she didn’t formally tell a kid to do that, that was good.  When everyone surged out of their seats, she was able to keep up with them and find the way to her first class, which was maths.

She repeated the thing with introducing herself to the teacher and getting her desk.  By the end of the day, she was an expert.  At lunch, three girls had come up to her, said hi and proceeded to interrogate her, she suspected on behalf of the giggling and whispering group further away in the cafeteria.  They’d settled themselves around her with their lunch trays, like friends, but Kyra wasn’t fooled.  They were too well dressed, too immediately welcoming, for that.  Seventh grade royalty.  So she braced herself and answered, the way she and Bobby had worked out.

_Kyra Singer._

_From Ohio._

_My father got work here.  Security._

She could see interest fade, at least any idea that she might be on a level with them.  One of them, Alicia, mentioned that her father was a city councillor, another, that hers was a doctor.  They prodded for detail;  did she mean her dad ran his own company or was he, heaven forbid, a _mall guard_.  What about her mother?  “I don’t have one.  I have two fathers.”  “Ooh.  They’re gay?  Your parents are two gay guys?”  “Yeah, that’s kind of what two fathers means.”  She couldn’t restrain a sharpness there, saw the flat, predatory gleam in their eyes.  “So what does your other father do?”  Kyra hesitated there;  she really couldn’t think of an acceptable way to describe Crowley and Bobby hadn’t prepared her with an answer there.  “He works from home,” she said finally.  A storm of giggles erupted, and then a sudden departure, all three rising at once and talking over her to each other, then a final parting glance and a, “Well, enjoy Charming!”

Alone at the table, in an otherwise full cafeteria, Kyra methodically ate her lunch, not looking around at all.  You never showed weakness.  Hunters and middle school were united on that point.  At least today was a short day;  for whatever reason, she’d be heading home in an hour.

*

Bobby pulled in to the house’s driveway;  noting that he still wasn’t thinking of the place as “home,”  it was still “the house.”  He had found a supermarket to pick up various items they’d probably need, and afterwards gone for a drive around the town to orient himself a bit as to where things were.  On his way back, he had been able to drive here without too much concentration as to street names and where to turn, which was good, considering he had enough on his mind as it was.  Talking with Unser, realising that the man at least knew of the hunters’ world even if he wasn’t a part of it, was a huge load off his mind.  The knowledge that there were at least half a dozen ‘cases’ piled up around the town, with damn few clues, wasn’t exactly reassuring, but Bobby had to admit to himself that the news had made him feel awake, and needed, more than he had since his rebirth.

He hoped that Crowley was going to be keen on helping.  He smiled to himself, wondering how Crowley was going to react when he met Jax.  Funny, despite the fact he had got so involved with Crowley, he hadn’t noticed Jax in that way at all.  Good looking, yeah, in a feral, dangerous sort of way, but it seemed as though any non-heterosexual feelings in him would be resolved for only one man.

When he entered the house, he called a hello, not sure whether it was late enough for Kyra to be back yet.  Crowley called something back and Bobby tracked his voice to the spare bedroom/study, where he found Crowley standing over a cleared table, setting out an array of ingredients before him around a large bowl.  “Somethin’ stinks in here,”  he greeted the demon.  “You cooking?”

“Not yet,”  Crowley said distractedly.  “I’m missing the vampire teeth….and I need a reliable source for the blood.”

“Pass,”  Bobby said, stepping back.   Crowley had already set out an array of jars on the bookcase opposite the door, and some had contents he wasn’t sure he wanted to see.  The demon seemed intent on turning the room into a mad scientist’s lab.

“You wouldn’t be able to spare enough, darling.  Never mind, I’m sure the hospital has a blood bank.”

“Uh, the local bikers already know about you bein’ found naked in the street.  Can we not be any weirder than we have to be for a while?”

That got a familiar smirk and Bobby found himself stepping forward to meet it, navigating around the boxes of books which Crowley had dumped on the floor so that he could kiss the demon.  He found himself getting hard like some teenager as he slid an arm around the demon to pull him closer, but Crowley resisted.  “I’m trying to work here, Robert.”

“You said yourself you’re short of ingredients.  Take a bit of time off,”  Bobby cajoled, sliding a hand to Crowley’s shoulder, stroking to his neck, turning the demon’s face to him so that he could kiss him properly.  Crowley returned the kiss, then moved back a little to look at the hunter’s face.

“Bit tense, are we, love?”  he murmured.  Bobby gasped suddenly as he felt Crowley’s hand slide into the front of his jeans and grasp his erection with practised skill, rubbing and fondling him. 

“God, that feels good,”  the hunter breathed, knowing that it wouldn’t be enough.  “How long . . .  have we got before school lets out, you remember?  God, that sounds all wrong.”

“Not a clue, darling.  I really am quite busy here…”

“ _Crowley!_ ”

“Now you know how I felt on the first couple of occasions we met, Robert.”

“You were tryin’ to get me to sell my soul to you, dipshit, we weren’t goin’ on a date.”

“Ah, the romance.  Very well, Robert, if you insist…”  He hadn’t stopped touching Bobby despite the teasing words, but now his grip tightened on him, suddenly committed, jerking Bobby with satisfying force which made the hunter growl with pleasure, gripping Crowley’s shoulders.  “Call it a down payment….”  Crowley gasped, “on tonight, darling….”

Bobby laughed breathlessly, and then things got intense for several minutes before he found his breathing easing at last.  He gripped Crowley’s shoulder, his other arm still around him, his face pressed against Crowley’s beard.  “I don’t know….about tonight,”  he admitted, which was when they heard Kyra’s voice in the hall.

“I’m not saying “I told you so” but that _was_ your idea,”  Crowley said, waving towards the door.  Bobby muttered direly as he zipped,  but still not regretting the last few moments.

“Get your zap power back soon, we’re gonna need it,”  he retorted over his shoulder, headed for the bathroom and a rushed clean up, but Crowley only laughed.

*

In a moment of weakness, Kyra regretted refusing Bobby’s offer to come get her.  She’d packed what she’d need for homework and made her way out to the front of the school, steeling herself to get past the scrum of escapees sorting themselves out.  Despite what she'd said - and in her experience it had been true - there did seem to be quite a few parents collecting kids The high school, home of the ninth to twelfth graders, was only down the road, so there were also some big brothers and sisters about to collect their sibs.  Not far from her, someone shrieked and Kyra spun around;  that had been a cry of pain, not just squeeing.

There was a kid sprawled in the gravel, backpack flung into the bushes and books fallen out.  Two others stood above him – her?  She shouldn’t get involved, Kyra knew; another really good way to get bullies on you was to interfere with their victim.  But the kid swung an arm up to block a scuffled kick and she saw blood dripping along a scrape, a deep one.  In her mind’s eye she wondered what Bobby would think and she knew he would disapprove;  he helped, when someone was in trouble.  _Oh well, I was never going to be the popular kid anyway._

She walked past the two harassers like they weren’t there.  “Need a hand up?”  she asked the fallen kid, speaking casually.

“Nah, it looks great where it is,” one of the bullies called out.

The kid – a dark-haired boy – extended a hand silently and Kyra steadied him to his feet.  The bully who had spoken shoved her in the back and she nearly lost her own footing, but as she turned, bracing for a fight, help arrived in the form of the adult world, one of the teachers, who scolded the bullies off, but didn’t bother to come back and check for damage.  Kyra and the kid looked at one another warily.  Only a sixth grader, Kyra decided; small and skinny even for that, with the kind of bowl haircut that looked like their parent had lost a bet.  He wasn’t bad looking; olive skinned to go with the raven black hair, but instead of the expected brown eyes, his were almost yellow.  Still not – and it still felt weird to know this – the luminous yellow of a demon’s eyes.

“Thanks,”  the kid muttered and went to pick up the fallen books.

Well, she hadn’t counted on instant friendship.  “You’re welcome,”  Kyra said and made her escape out to the street, automatically checking that no one was paying any special attention to her.  After nearly two months living below ground in the Men of Letters bunker, it felt unnerving to be outside under the sky, with so many strangers about.  That time had helped her to ease down from the terror of her experience with Lucifer, demons and possession.  She wasn’t all right, she wasn’t sure if she would ever be, but she could manage a day at school by herself and to walk home afterwards.

“So, how did it go?”  Bobby asked, later in the kitchen.  He’d been a bit flushed when he came in, like he’d been hurrying, but he seemed okay, she decided.  More importantly, he’d made her a snack  - cut her a piece of fruit cake, anyway – and stayed there to chat.  It had taken her weeks to decide – traumatised and confused in the alien world of hunters and monsters – but now she was sure that Bobby was the safe refuge she had never known.

“It was okay.”

“Kids nice to you?”  Kyra looked at him blankly and he sighed.  “Sorry.  I just want to be sure you’re okay.  Meet anybody?”

“Some of the mean girls checked me out.”

“Mean…”  Bobby cut himself off.  “I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Like the movie, Robert,”  Crowley said as he came in.  “We’ll watch some DVDs and the world of junior high will make a whole lot more sense to you.”

“I doubt it,”  Bobby muttered.

“And some boys shoved a kid into the gravel and I helped him get up.”

“Uh, that was nice of you.”

“He had yellow eyes.”

“ _What the hell?_ ”

“Sorry, no, that’s not what I mean.  They were this funny browny yellow colour, like a wolf’s eyes.”

Bobby looked at Crowley, who shrugged expressively.  “I didn’t sense anything untoward, love.”

“You mean you came to the school?”  Kyra looked at the demon in dismay.  “I asked you guys not to, I mean, only the little kids’ parents show up with them and pick them up and stuff.”

“Your situation’s a bit different, darling,”  Crowley said, looking at her seriously.  She had from the beginning liked the way he spoke to her, as though she was a grown up already.  _He don’t understand kids very well,_ was how Bobby had put it.  “I don’t need to spell that out for you, do I?  It’s not as though you’re a Winchester.  I had to make sure there’s no one nearby that might cause trouble, or be there in order to cause us trouble.  And you weren’t even aware I was there, so no harm done.”

“Get another look at this kid if you can,”  Bobby said to him.  “There may be another reason you noticed him, Kyra, even if you’re not aware of it.  He may be a perfectly ordinary kid with a funny eye colour…”

“Being kicked around by bigger kids,”  Kyra muttered.  She knew what that felt like.  “What else has yellow eyes and looks like a person?”

“Werewolf close to the change,”  Bobby suggested.  “Kitsune.  Shit, I hope it’s not an adolescent kitsune.”

“He was _maybe_ my age,”  Kyra said.  “But how am I meant to show Crowley who I mean without looking like a complete loser?”  Bobby hid a grin, or tried to;  it was perfectly obvious to Kyra that he was trying not to laugh.  “Please.  It’s only a few weeks until this dumb school starts the summer break.”

Crowley spread his hands and shrugged.  “If there’s anything in that school not 100 per cent soul-sellable human, I can find it out without anyone’s help.”

Kyra looked from him to Bobby and back again, gaze dwelling on his black suit – _only my second best suit!_ – Crowley had lamented, but glad he had at least left some of his clothes behind with Bobby.  Would it do any good to ask him to dress down a bit before the inevitable day when some of her classmates got a look at Crowley and linked him to her?  Judging by the grin he flashed her, no, it wouldn’t.  She saw him look at Bobby, the smile subtly changing, and realised;  Bobby was that safety for Crowley too.  Okay, she didn’t entirely get their relationship, she knew.  You couldn’t trust most people even to do what they said they would do, let alone not let you down.  And that was people.  Crowley was . . . something else.  But he had stood between her and the thing that scared her deep into her marrow.

She got up from the table, awkward with it, and before she could talk herself out of it, she turned to Bobby and hugged him, putting her arms around his neck.  The hunter’s arms went about her and held her, carefully light, releasing when she showed she wanted to move.  Still not saying anything, Kyra hugged Crowley next, careful to let him see she was going to.  Only Bobby got to surprise him.  “What’s this for then, love?”  he asked, tone still jaunty, but he put his arms around her as Bobby had done, which he would not have done if he minded.

“Nothing,”  Kyra mumbled.  “Just I love you.  Both of you.”

“Even if Crowley wears his suit to pick you up from school?”  Bobby asked, pushing his chair back so he could come over and do the group hug thing.

“Even then,”  Kyra answered recklessly.  She pressed her face against Bobby’s chest and felt herself relax.  He was there.  Crowley was there.  It was so good to feel safe.

*

She saw the yellow-eyed boy next day, in her chemistry class, which she hadn’t had the day before.  He looked even smaller among the big boys of the seventh grade, and acted sort of tensed up, like he expected someone to attack him even there.  But he went through his work without a hitch, not asking for anyone’s help, and when the teacher called on him, he answered easily.  His name was Rafael Catalano, she discovered, when they had to team up in pairs and of course the teacher had to put them together.  Rafael looked at her as though they had never met the day before and she felt cold, like someone had turned an airconditioner on her full blast.

He wasn’t mean or anything, just kind of distant.  He came over like the teacher said and found the exercise in their book that they were meant to work from.  Kyra was awkward;  not wanting to admit she had no idea what to do.  Even before she’d ended up in Jeff Watkins’ clutches, her school attendance had been sporadic for most of a year.  When her parents had taken drugs together, no one had helped her get ready for school and when she hid in her room and didn’t go at all, no one noticed.  When her mother had finally gotten herself enough together to leave, they had bolted with only the clothes they were wearing, none of Kyra’s school records or any other records, for that matter.

She had told Bobby, when he found the guy who made fake records for them, that he shouldn’t give her that many Bs, but he hadn’t really believed her.  He’d thought she was being too modest.  Now, she looked at Rafael in a kind of panic, not caring any more what he thought.  She said, “I can’t do this.”

Rafael blinked and seemed different then, the cold, indifferent look of him gone.  He seemed to understand that she meant it and that she was scared of people knowing.  “It’s okay,”  he said.  “You just got here yesterday and schools do stuff differently.  We just have to look at this stuff under the microscope.  Here, I’ll set it up and you take a look.”

She got through the class somehow, just by following Rafael’s instructions.  When the bell rang, she stayed in her seat until most of the kids had left and was surprised to find him waiting for her.  “Thanks,”  she said.  “Just…thanks.”

His grin was shy then.  “Didn’t think I’d be able to pay you back for yesterday this soon.”

That made her feel a bit better.  She put the textbook away in her bag, and the notepad, realising that they had reached the lunch hour and there was no screaming hurry to get anywhere.   “I’ve got sandwiches,”  she said. 

“Same,”  he nodded.

“You know somewhere quiet we could go to eat?”

He did; a small grove of trees at the edge of the football field, far enough away that the sounds of a lunchtime game was only a distant annoyance.  Kyra was surprised to realise she didn’t feel awkward around him any more, that somehow over the past hour, they seemed to have become friends.  She talked about how it sucked to come into school this late in the year, and Rafael talked about how it sucked to be one of the youngest in seventh grade, but still smarter than most everyone, which he admitted so shyly that it couldn’t be considered boasting. 

“I only turned thirteen last week,”  he said gloomily, as though it was a personal failing.

“I don’t turn thirteen till next week,”  she offered, not sure why.  She hadn’t even told Bobby exactly when her birthday was, since she didn’t want any recognition or remembrance of the date.  “So they could’ve made me stay down a year.  I’ve been mostly homeschooled for most of the year, so I guess some of what I know is kind of spotty.  You can’t really do experiments at home unless you buy your own bunsen burner and microscope and stuff.  But they didn’t make me do any science on the test when I enrolled to check my grade, just some English and maths.”

“I’ll help you,”  Rafael promised immediately.  “We can be buddies in class and maybe study sometimes…if you want.”

“I want,”  Kyra assured him.  She saw someone in black walking past on the footpath and immediately thought of Crowley, though surely she wouldn’t spot him.  “But I am so glad it’s nearly holidays.”

Rafael didn’t look quite so happy about it and looked away without answering.  “Maybe you can show me around Charming once holidays start?”  Kyra asked and when he smiled, realised he’d thought she would simply walk away out of school.  It had been a long time since she’d ever mattered like that to anyone, if ever.  But how on earth was she going to bring him home to meet Bobby and Crowley?  After the encounter with the girls, she didn’t want to talk about having two dads.  It was bad enough being a foster kid.

“My family are pretty weird,”  Rafael said.  “It might be better if we meet somewhere else.”

“Good call,”  Kyra agreed.  “Mine too.”


	5. Snow Day, Storm Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where there is actual plot and supernatural elements where they were not expected!

Three weeks later,  a week out from the summer break, Bobby found the remains of a ghoul nest, complete with the remains of their last meal, in a disused cabin on the edge of town.  That had been one of the locations Unser had marked in the info he’d given Bobby, and raised the hunter’s opinion of the sheriff.  Not that his opinion had been low, just that Unser had been unproven.  The remains were sent off for testing and came back positive for one of Unser’s missing persons, whose family were then simply told that the bones had been discovered.  No need to add the detail that those bones had been cracked open, and bore the marks of teeth.

“I wish we could’ve found the actual ghouls,”  the hunter told Unser.  “They could still be about, though I doubt it;  they’ll have moved on to some other town that won’t have any idea what’s goin’ on.”

“I’ll get in touch with some of the officers in surrounding towns, tell them what to look out for,”  Unser promised.

Yeah, the sheriff knew a thing or two.

So did Crowley, but Bobby was concerned that he was keeping those things to himself.   He’d set up the spare room as a lab and was gathering various spell ingredients which Bobby didn’t ask about much.  So far as he knew, Crowley still couldn’t ‘port, but he had no idea about the rest of his demonic powers or even if he could still be called a demon. He was also going through their share of the bunker library with Bobby, setting aside the volumes which had most to do with witches and witch magic.

Crowley had stopped his odd complaints about feeling too cold, though the local weather was much cooler than the norm and there’d been some unseasonal storms in the area as well.  That triggered Bobby’s personal alarm system, even though there were as yet no unexplained murders or bodies turning up with their eyes burned out, which might indicate that Lucifer was about.  Surely the fallen archangel had gone to some other point of the world which his enemies couldn’t reach?  There’d be no sense in faffing around here in America, in the parts of America where the Winchesters and/or Bobby could find him.  If Lucifer went to ground and came back in another generation, none of them would be above ground to care.  Still, there was no shortage of idjits in the world, human, angel or whatever the hell else.  If stupidity helped them get the better of the Prince of Darkness, he’d take it.

*

Crowley was at work in his lab, the night after Bobby found the ghoul nest, when Kyra knocked softly on the open door, staying there until he looked up and nodded.  “Hello, love.  Bobby still out?”

“Yeah, he’s doing his rounds tonight,”  Kyra said. 

She paused to study him as intently as though seeing him for the first time, which made Crowley pause from his grinding up of purported unicorn horn – there was a test he planned to try which should verify it – and ask, “Something wrong?  Did I get powder on my suit?”

“You know nobody wears a suit at night when they’re home?” she asked.

“That’s good, darling, I detected the subtle sarcasm there.  You’ve been studying with Robert.”

“So why do you?”

Crowley couldn’t count the number of demons he’d fried – or worse – for asking him what he considered impertinent questions like this.  Or just questions.  Sometimes you just weren’t in the mood.  But he couldn’t remember too many people, apart from Bobby, who had asked him things because they genuinely wanted to know.  People who seemed to care about him. 

“Because I never got the chance when I was alive,”  he said, realising the truth of it as he spoke.  “When I came up again from Hell, this was what the successful gentlemen wore.  Still wear, really, though styles have changed over the past couple of hundred years.  The suit is the ultimate choice.”  He brushed his lapel fondly.  “It gives a good impression, indicates you know what you’re doing, that you mean business…”

“With deals?”

“Exactly.”

“But you aren’t working for Hell any more,”  Kyra said, clearly troubled by more than his sartorial choices.  “You could wear other stuff that show you’re successful as well as just black suits.”

“And maybe I will, when I want to.  Why are you suddenly so interested, hmm?”

“Well, if I was going to ask, you know, anyone from school around here, they’re going to see you.”

“And being in the sights of some pimply adolescent should concern me why?”

This, Kyra knew, was the kind of thing which concerned Bobby and made him assure her that Crowley didn’t understand kids.  He only rarely had dealings with them as part of the soul-selling thing and was going on whatever vague memories he had from his lifetime, centuries ago.  And also on the offerings of Netflix.

“He’s not pimply,”  she blurted.

Crowley grinned, a slow, predatory expression.  “Ah, now we have it, darling.  You’re worried that your beloved parents are going to embarrass you in front of a _boy_!”

“I’m never going to bring anyone home now,”  Kyra vowed.  “Not even when I’m thirty!”

She bolted to the accompaniment of Crowley’s laughter.

Kyra had gone to bed by the time Bobby got back, weary but glad that all seemed quiet around the town.  “Which just means that I’m not lookin’ in the right places,”  he told Crowley resignedly, “but I’ll settle for now.”  When Crowley relayed the conversation he had had with Kyra, Bobby groaned at him.  “I hoped we had awhile longer before we turned into the embarrassment of her social life.  You sure she wanted to invite a boy around?”

“Absolutely, darling,”  Crowley purred.  “She was quite the critic of my stylish apparel, you know.”

“It’s not that it ain’t stylish.  But there’s places you wear your kind of gear and places…”

“Where you swathe yourself in plaid and denim.  I know.”   He sat on the bed, stripped to boxers now, quietly watching Bobby’s go-to-bed routine.  It occurred to him that he had seldom felt this kind of content, sitting on a bed in the kind of house he would never have considered for a moment, full of furnishings it had had when Bobby rented it, cheap and tasteless and mortal.  When in the bunker, he had always remained on guard, despite the apparent peace between him and the Winchesters.  And now, of course, they believed him dead.  You couldn’t have better peace than that.  Bobby would tell them soon, but they didn’t seem to be trying too hard to stay in touch and that didn’t encourage confidences.

Bobby finished undressing and switched off the main light, leaving only the small bedside lamp as he climbed into bed with a yawn.  He held out his arms to Crowley, who settled into them happily, and pulled the covers over both of them.  “I’m kind of tired tonight,”  Bobby started, but Crowley shushed him with a finger on his lips and rested his head against the hunter’s chest, wordlessly telling him there was no problem, that being with him was enough.  Words would only embarrass Bobby, there was no need for that.  Settled against Bobby, he closed his eyes, though he was fully awake.  _This won’t last_ , he thought.  Bobby was rubbing his back lightly, his motion slowing to a stop as sleep took him.  _Why does it still feel so good?_

_*_

On Kyra’s last day of seventh grade, she allowed Bobby to pick her up from school.  So he was gone doing that, leaving Crowley on his own at the house.  Bobby had wanted him to come along as well, but Crowley had declined.  _What a world, when Bobby is the more acceptable parent in that appalling plaid and denim combo._   It also gave him a chance to run some final tests.  On himself.

By now,  Crowley was grimly certain of what he had suspected, that the resurrection spell had not brought quite all of him back.  He had not told Bobby the exact reason for his rush of experiments and interest in witch magic, which had never been his primary skill anyway.  His centuries of study had brought him a certain ability, but he was not a natural talent, like Rowena or her bitch squad in the Grand Coven.   Still, it didn’t take Einstein to know that he could not access the demon talents of teleportation, telekinetics and pyrotechnics.  It took rather more than that to discover why, and what his current status – or species – now was.

This damned sensitivity to cold (and heat) had surprised him, especially when Bobby was not nearly so affected.  He woke drenched in night sweats and shivered his way through early mornings.  Both he and Bobby were tracking the weather patterns and knew that the changes could mean Lucifer’s presence, though surely Lucy had more brains than to stay anywhere hunters could find him?  Especially given that they had tricked him, in that apocalypse world.

So was he actually human now?  In the end, Crowley took Bobby’s flask of holy water – the senior hunter’s ever present accessory – and tipped some of the contents into his palm.  In the next second he hissed in pain and plunged his hand into the bowl of milk he had set ready.  When he extracted his hand again, somewhat gingerly, there was a definite, raw crater in the centre of his palm.  _Right.  Good to know.  I wonder how long I’ll take to heal now?._

There was another test, of course, but he found himself reluctant to try exiting his vessel.  For one, there was nobody reliable he could try to take over except Bobby or Kyra, and that perhaps was not a good move, though he had been trying to convince himself to make the attempt that morning, until Bobby woke up.  And for some reason he wasn’t at all clear on, he did not want to think about the possibility he wouldn’t be able to get back.

Crowley paced throughout the house as he considered.  He _was_ still a demon, but apparently only the disadvantages were left to him, which was about right for one of Rowena’s spells.  He was going to have to think more like a hunter, in terms of protecting himself and his family from Lucifer.   Or other demons.  Or any other bloody threat which came their way, until he could solve his present difficulty and get his powers back.  Still, he was doing better than Castiel, who was gods knew where, while his vessel remained, mummy-like, in the Winchesters’ burrow.  The lack of corruption might well be an angel thing;  he wasn’t at all sure on that point.  Perhaps they could do this to make sure a desired vessel would be there when needed, without the bothersome ritual of asking permission.

Cas – his spirit, whatever you called it – could have been fried to nothing, of course.  Or he was lost in Purgatory.  Crowley was surprised to realise this actually concerned him, at least a little.  He would put that on his list of projects, definitely;  how to reaquaint a clueless angel with his vessel after said angel had been stabbed with an angel blade by Satan.

He looked up at the sound of shouts from outside the house, having been lost in his thoughts for longer than he’d intended.  He strolled into the front room and pulled aside a curtain to look out on to the street, where some of the neighbours were standing, staring upwards at the sky.  A look at the ground told him why.  That morning, the sky had been clear, the weather coolish for summer, but not crazily so.  But now, that sky was leaden gray and snow covered the lawns and street, still falling on the heads of the astonished humans.

Crowley watched them laughing and picking up handfuls of snow to throw at one another, but his own face was grim.  He decided to zap to where Bobby was, damn the audience, and get him and Kyra to safety, then cursed as he remembered.  Bobby had walked rather than driven, saying he could use the exercise, but that didn’t help Crowley, who had never bothered to learn to drive.  He hurried out of the house, feeling chill wet stuff find its way instantly inside his shoes.  The temperature had dropped drastically in only the last hour and yet these fools….somebody hurled a snowball at the back of Crowley’s neck and he spun around, mentally assembling a fireball in his thoughts… _damn Mother’s spell…_ as the teenager who had thrown it laughed uproariously and belted away.

A thunderous roar drowned out their idiotic voices and Crowley heard his name called.  Well, the man was yelling “Fergus” which would have gotten him fried if Crowley didn’t know that Bobby was responsible for that name getting around.  He shaded his eyes against the falling snow to make out the form of the lean biker with the curly dark hair and startling blue eyes, straddling his Harley next to him on the road.  Some nonsense name…Zig - Tig, that was right.  “You all right?” Tig asked, studying him as though he thought Crowley was about to go into convulsions at any moment. 

“Yes, I’m fine.  I’m just going to meet up with Bobby and Kyra, it’s her last school day…”

“Who’d have thought they’d give ‘em a snow day in midsummer?”  Tig grinned, waving a hand through the snow, now falling more heavily.  “This is fucking crazy!”

“Yes,”  Crowley said.

“You want a ride?”

*

Bobby was almost at the school when the snow appeared almost out of nowhere.  He ignored the cries of shock and wonder all around him from the parents of kids, and the kids themselves.  More than one car slid into another one in the pick-up chaos turned slippery slide, and he turned his collar up, hoping Kyra had sense enough to stay away from the road until he found her.  He turned at the sound of the Harley, startled to find Crowley clambering off the back and rather dazedly waving thanks to Tig, who joined the traffic throng with a grin of anticipation.

“Not that I mind, but what are you doing here?”  Bobby asked him.

“I’m not entirely sure,”  Crowley admitted.  “I saw _that_ and I needed to find you and Kyra.”  He indicated the sky.  “Not even these creatures can pretend this is a normal weather occurrence.”

“You’d be surprised.  Come on, let’s find her and get out of this.”

There were a surprising number of small slim girls with black spiky hair in the crowd, it turned out, many of them wearing the kind of blue shirt Kyra had worn to school that day.  She was going to be freezing, Bobby thought, what the hell were the teachers thinking to let the kids stay out here?  Before he could actually find one to demand answers, Kyra was there in front of them, another kid beside her, both of them soaked to the skin.  Kyra was wearing a light tan jacket she definitely hadn’t gone to school in, and as Bobby’s gaze went from her to the boy beside her, who wore jeans and a white t-shirt, he had the urge to smile.  The boy was no taller than Kyra, dark haired and with surprisingly light amber eyes for his olive colouring.  Definitely not demonic yellow.

“Bobby, this is Rafael.  He’s got a long way to walk and his mother isn’t home,”  Kyra said.  “Can he come over and dry out?”

“Sure, I guess,”  Bobby said.  He was about to suggest she give her friend back his jacket and take Bobby’s, but a look at the boy’s face changed his mind about that.  He nodded to Rafael, man to man, and turned about to head home.  “You two get in a snow fight?”

“If you mean pelted from the back when we came out, yes,”  Kyra answered.  The wind rose abruptly, spattering their faces with snow, and she pressed closer to Bobby, using him as a windbreak.  Crowley walked on her other side, shielding from that direction.  The normally easy, 10 minute walk seemed to take an age, but finally they were home and Rafael had gone into the bathroom with a pile of clothes that belonged to Kyra.  He didn’t seem to mind borrowing from a girl and truly, her things were fairly generic.  Once the kids were in dry clothes and back in the kitchen, Bobby was able to get back to business.

He found a news report, and set the laptop on the kitchen table so that everyone could listen in, but apart from gushing about the suddenness and severity of the unseasonal snowstorm, the news anchors weren’t saying much.  They did learn that the area affected was widespread; pretty much the entire country.   Bobby and Crowley’s eyes met at that point, and they moved into the living room to talk.  “I could call Sam and Dean, but they probably won’t want to talk to me,”  Crowley said.

“I know.  Okay, you stay with the kids and I’ll talk to the boys.  Don’t terrify Rafael.” Crowley smirked.  “I mean it.”

“I’m not the one with the shotgun in his car’s trunk.”  Bobby gave him an exasperated look, then quickly pulled Crowley to him and kissed him.  “What’s that for, love?”

“For comin’ to meet us.  Go on, look after them.  I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“What’s happening?”  Kyra asked him when he rejoined them.  She’d found the fruit cake which Bobby had put into the pantry and cut slices for herself and Rafael.  The news report had gone on to sports and Crowley quickly shut the laptop.

“He needs to talk to Sam and Dean,”  he said, and moved over to put the kettle on.

“Who’re Sam and Dean?”  Rafael whispered to Kyra.

“Kind of family friends.”

“Why are your folks this worried about the snow?  I mean, sure, it’s weird….”

“You think?  When does your mom get home?”

“I’m not sure.  She and her sister are busy with something.”

Crowley kept his back to them, making a cup of tea slowly, since he knew the chat would dry up if he was sitting at the table facing them.  Maybe this boy wasn’t any of the human-seeming monsters Bobby had hunted and which he had encountered also from time to time, but that didn’t mean he was a typically unaware human.  From what the kid was saying;  he lived with his mother and aunt, no father on the horizon, or at least not that he was mentioning.  With the laptop shut off, the noise from the growing storm outside was noticeable, rattling things in the roof and the day was now so dark that he switched on the kitchen overhead light.

“Sorry about that,”  Bobby said as he returned to the kitchen.  “How are you doing, Rafael?  Slowly unfreezing there, I hope?”  Rafael nodded.  He was now wearing a pale violet polo shirt belonging to Kyra, with a gray hoodie over it.  “So you’re in Kyra’s grade?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bobby tried not to look astonished but must have failed;  Crowley smirked at him from behind where Rafael sat.  He was definitely not used to boys who called him sir.    “Well, I’m glad she’s made a friend,”  he offered awkwardly.  He went to the nearest window to look out, not liking the wildness of the weather.  “When do you expect your mom home?”

“I don’t know.  She got called by her boss for a job….her and my aunt.  This morning before school, so everything looked okay then.  Look, I’ll be fine.  If you wouldn’t mind giving me a ride, though….”

“Sure, son, that’s no problem, but I don’t like the idea of leaving you at your place on your own with a snow storm comin’.  Why don’t you give your mom a call and say you’re here?”

Rafael still seemed awkward about it, but Kyra nodded encouragingly when he looked at her, and he went out of the kitchen to make his call, taking a phone from his jeans’ pocket.  Crowley drifted after him so that he could listen in from the doorway, ignoring Kyra’s look.  He moved back towards the table when the boy came in again.  “I couldn’t reach her, but I left her a message saying I’m at a school friend’s house,”  he said.

“That’s fine.  What sort of work do your mom and auntie do?”

“Uh, they mostly work from home but sometimes they get called out for jobs,”  Rafael said.  _Which don’t tell me anything at all,_   Bobby thought, a bit mystified.  He made the kids some hot chocolate and collected Crowley with a look, saying they had some things to take care of.  Kyra was so relieved they were leaving the room that she didn’t even try to hide it.

“What did the kid say on the phone?”  Bobby asked once he and Crowley reached their bedroom.

“Well, he was lying about the message,”  Crowley said serenely.  “I still have my wonderfully acute hearing and there was a woman answering at the other end.  Two women, since the aunt chimed in at one point.  Boy jumped straight in and said he was at the hunter’s house.  Mother seemed rather upset about this and boy told her Kyra was his friend.  Cue unintelligible interruption from auntie.  Then mother says “the master” still has a task for them to do and they will return by tomorrow.  Boy’s to be home by then and he needs to forget about girls who aren’t of the line.”  Bobby swore at length.  “I tend to agree, darling, but you did promise to mind the language around the children.”

“So what are they?  He’s human, I’d swear to it.”

“Witch clan would be my guess,”  Crowley said.  “I don’t read Rafael as a witch, but I never met another witch’s child, so I’m not sure when the power manifests.  It’s possible he’s of the line but not the talent, which I know something about myself.”

“You know magic!”

“I spent several hundred years studying, love.  I was never a witch when I was living topside as a human.  Mother dearest called me a slow learner and that was probably one of her nicest comments.”

“Well, we need to get the address out of the kid so one of us can go around there and check it out.”

“In a snowstorm?”

“What’s the bet that this weird weather and their Master are connected?”

“Robert, Rowena is many things, but she did not raise an idiot.”

“Is?  I thought Lucifer killed her.”  _And she never bothered to actually raise you at all, from what I hear._

“We should be so lucky.”

In the end, Bobby called Sam again and asked him to see if he could hack the school records and get the address that way, rather than raise the kid’s suspicions by too many probing questions.  He also passed on the details of what Crowley had learned.  “You know, it might be good if you boys could drive down this way,”  he said.  “I don’t know if it’s Lucifer but it’s sure as hell something hunters should investigate.”

_“Sure as hell?”_

“You know what I mean.  Talk to Dean.”

“ _I’ll try.”_

 


	6. To Purgatory's Fires

 

Bobby couldn’t decide whether Rafael was on best behaviour with the parents, or whether he was genuinely a studious sort of kid.  He was smart, that was clear early on, but he didn’t make Kyra feel stupid when he talked about school stuff, and he seemed to think things like mathematics were interesting of themselves.  Bobby made dinner, and then he and Crowley moved to the living room while the kids stayed at the kitchen table, talking about what there was to do in Charming and discussing the traits of the various teachers and what Kyra could expect from them the following year.  And from what he overheard, Rafael could have been 100 per cent normal.  Nothing to do with the supernatural at all.

He noted that Crowley had removed his tie and taken his coat off, though the way things were going, they all might be back in coats soon.  So far the heating was working, but Bobby didn’t like all the rattling the system made as it operated.  He looked out at the street again, unable to see much beyond the window.  The streetlights were on but not making much headway, and the snow now lay thickly on the ground.  The few cars which passed did so slowly, and even so, they skidded and screeched as their unaccustomed drivers tried to control them.  The wind had quietened down some and Bobby dared to hope that there would not be a storm that night.

Then even as he turned to say that to Crowley, the lights failed, inside and out, meaning that the streetlighting and lights from other houses vanished.  A low whining sound greeted the rising of the wind.  Kyra and Rafael hurried in to join them, the former asking whether they had any candles.  For reply, Bobby picked up the flashlight he kept near the front door and switched it on.  “I think we might as well head to bed,”  he said.  “I know it’s still pretty early but there’s not much we can do with no power, and it’ll get pretty cold in here now.  Rafe, I’ll get you some sheets and blankets and make up the couch for you.”

There was surprisingly little objection from either Rafael or Kyra as Bobby did that, sending Kyra off to her room to get ready for bed and leaving the flashlight with Rafael so he could finish getting undressed.  As soon as they were back in the bedroom, Crowley conjured the witchlight, smirking at Bobby in its low orangey glow.  “You do know Kyra will be out of her room in five minutes and they’ll be talking half the night?”

“So long as it’s just talkin’, that’s fine,”  Bobby said.

“You thinking that boy is a danger to her?  Being a possible witch,”  Crowley clarified with another suggestive grin.

“He’s got no reason that I can tell,”  Bobby muttered.  Given Rafael’s age, he wasn’t really concerned about the other danger.  He _wasn’t_.  Besides, Kyra was more than able to deliver a punch to the nose if she had to. 

“I can hear them chatting already,”  Crowley said soothingly.  “Any sign of trouble or of Rafael not being a gentleman and I’m on the job.”

“I was hopin’ you could spare some time for not bein’ a gentleman right here.”

“I thought you’d never ask, darling.”

*

Bobby removed his hand from over Crowley’s mouth, still breathing hard as he lay against him.  Crowley moved free of him and turned in his arms to face him, giving an indignant thump to the hunter’s bare chest.  “Care to explain why you felt the need to _gag_ me there?”

“Shut up!”  Bobby hissed.

The wind was still high, blowing and rattling around the house like an impatient dragon.  Crowley sat up, shifting to lean his back against the bedhead.   The power was still out, evidently;  Bobby was reaching over to the lamp and clicked it several times with a huff of annoyance.  Without the central heating, it was getting seriously cold.

Bobby got resignedly out of bed; headed for the en suite bathroom and a clean up, as he did every time after they made love.  Crowley was getting to know his hunter better than he ever had before, and that made him smile.  Bobby was a person of habit;  he liked his peace and quiet and routine, broken up by hunts, to be sure, but that too was one of his routines.  And now he had a routine of regular sex with the King of Hell, Crowley thought, smirking to himself.

“I didn’t want the kids hearing,”  Bobby said, continuing the conversation as he returned and got back into bed, quickly pulling the covers over himself.

“Figured that, love, but the weather’s providing quite a good cover for any noise,”  Crowley said pointedly.  “You’re also not exactly silent yourself, especially when I – what?”

“Heard somethin’ out on the street.  Somebody yelling.”

Crowley gave him a sceptical look, but stayed quiet so that he too could listen, and in the next moment heard definite human noise, a wordless shriek and maybe half a word.  Bobby was out of bed again and grabbing for his pants and jacket.  Crowley made do with a dressing gown and hurried with him into the lounge, where Kyra and Rafael were also awake and on their feet.  “Stay inside,”  Bobby ordered

“I can help….”  Rafael began.

“Take care of Kyra.”  That dealt with the boy;  Crowley grinned as he followed Bobby outside, both of them ignoring Kyra’s indignant retort.  Bobby had his shotgun, having retrieved it from the gun safe.  “Stay clear,”  he told Crowley.  “Blessed rounds.”

“How in Hell….never mind.  Just ignore me,”  the demon yelled at Bobby’s back.  The hunter hurried over the snow covered ground towards the noise, the demon moving with considerably more care behind him.  Bobby nearly fell when he encountered the kerbside, which was hidden by the snow.  The road itself was invisible, giving the environment an almost rural look. 

They could still hear shrieks, but these were intermingled with a resonant snarling deeper and louder than any dog.  Maybe not quite _any_ dog, Crowley mused, but then he and Bobby saw the thing, which spun away from the human it had cornered to confront them.  Huge and shaggy with black fur, crouched like a gorilla, its eyes glowed a threatening red.  Next to it, Bobby appeared a small figure indeed, but he stood his ground to rack the shotgun and fire unerringly at the thing’s chest.  Crowley was half-expecting it to keep coming at them, but it staggered, the snarling breaking up into a dying gasp as it fell.

The demon glanced around, but with the power out, it was impossible to tell which homes were occupied.  Safe to say that firing a shotgun would have attracted attention, he thought.  Not to mention all the screaming and snarling.  Yet nobody else appeared at window or door.  Bobby plodded forward, trying to see who the person was.  “Are you okay?” he asked lamely.

“Bobby Singer?”  That deep Southern voice was definitely familiar.  Crowley had to grin as Venus van Dam stumbled forward and threw her arms around Bobby in a rib cracking embrace.  “Oh, you are a _life_ saver, Mr Singer!  What is that horrible thing?”

Crowley left Bobby to deal with her as best he could and turned his attention to the dead monster in the snow.  He prodded it with a slippered toe to be sure it actually was dead – any number of things would fake this to entrap you, oddly enough – and then examined it closely.  “Crowley!”  Bobby called, and he looked up.  “I’m gonna take Ms van Dam back to her apartment.  Can you, uh, move that?”

Clean up, he meant.  Crowley grimaced; he’d never wanted his powers more than he did right now.  It would have been so much easier to click his fingers and set the corpse on fire where it lay, than to grab an extremity and start hauling the thing behind the house for later disposal.  Still, Bobby could help Venus more than he could, and he also needed to talk her down, so that she wouldn’t call the police with her story of being attacked by a monster.  The demon did wonder how Bobby was going to explain, but that was his problem.  He reflected that the last time his feet were quite this cold, he’d been in the Scottish Highlands and had yet to make his demonic pact.

“Mr Crowley.”  Rafael appeared beside him and also took hold of the creature to help drag it.  Crowley said nothing and between them they got the thing around behind the house.  Crowley let go with distaste, waiting until his breathing eased before he turned to look at Rafael.

“Not too bothered by this, are you?”  he asked, not trying to hide his tone of understanding.

Rafael met his eyes and then shook his head, once.

“Know what it is?”

“I’ve only seen pictures…”

“In your mother’s Book of Shadows?  Or your auntie’s?”

The boy nodded.

“They’ve got a few names,”  Crowley said thoughtfully.  “Most recently I’ve heard ‘em called gorilla-wolves – the Winchesters use that stupid name, which I’d expect.  But I also thought they were stuck in Purgatory these days, which raises an interesting question, among so many interesting questions.”  He motioned Rafael ahead of him to the house.  Kyra was at the doorway, shivering with her arms around herself, and she gladly dodged back to let them in.

“Where’s Bobby?” she asked anxiously and Crowley repeated what Bobby had told him.

The wind blew a flurry of snow into the house and Crowley gestured at the door, which shut itself with a resounding crash.  Kyra made a small sound of shock.  Crowley’s night sight was far better than any human’s, and he could see her expression of confusion and disbelief that he’d do that in front of Rafael.  “Oh, he knows about supernatural abilities all right,”  the demon said.  “Especially witch powers, even if they aren’t augmented with infernal energies.  Go sit down, Rafael, over there where I can see you.  No, Kyra, you come over here.”

“I’m not going to hurt her – any of you,”  Rafael said in a low voice.  “I’m not even initiated yet.”

Crowley snagged Kyra’s hand and hauled her back when she would have ignored him and joined Rafael.  She squeaked in protest and Crowley tightened his grip.  “Wait for Bobby,”  he said.  His tone didn’t allow for any argument and Kyra gave him none.  Crowley to her was the being who ruled a realm beyond her imagining, and who had saved her from a horror she still couldn’t bear to think about.  She still dreamed about having Lucifer inside her head; herself aware yet powerless to move her body, to do anything at all, while the growing sickness of possession grew like a cancer that would ultimately husk her flesh to nothing.  Only Crowley’s presence held those memories back.

“What are you talking about?” she asked Rafael, not wanting to know, but needing to.  “What are you?”

“I’m a witch, kind of,”  Rafael said.  “But I haven’t done anything bad, I wouldn’t.”

The roaring of motorcycles could now be heard outside, rising above the noise of the wind.  Crowley winced as he thought what it would be like to ride one of the metal monsters in this weather.  Almost worth adding to the torture list below.  Probably Venus’s boyfriend, he thought, so that meant Bobby should be back soon.  The bikes passed their house and stopped not far away.  Within ten minutes or so, they heard the door rattle and then Bobby stepped in, shivering but unharmed, the flashlight making them all blink with its sudden brightness.  “That’s Tig and Jax,”  he said generally.  “We can expect a visit soon, I guess;  I can’t shake Venus from sayin’ she saw a monster creature, even though I tried to convince her it was a bear.”

“Rafael’s seen pictures of them in Mom’s book,”  Crowley told him.

“It’s just my mom and her sister Juanita.  They were never in a coven, they work on their own…”

“Have you heard the term Grand Coven?”  Crowley asked.

“They weren’t good enough to get in.  They tried.”

“But your family’s part of a witch clan?”  Bobby said tiredly.  He didn’t need this right now.  Why couldn’t Kyra have met a nice _human_ boy and had teen dramas?  “Who want you to partner up with a girl who’s of the right lineage, witch lineage?”

“How could you hear…”

Crowley tapped his ear and smiled a dark smile.  Rafael looked at him with growing unease.  Bobby stepped inbetween them and threw Crowley a warning look.  “Let’s skip that for the time bein’ and think about how a creature from Purgatory ended up on our street tryin’ to eat one of our neighbors,”  he growled.  “Speakin’ of which, what did you do with said creature, Crowley?”

“It’s in the back yard,”  Crowley sighed.  “I’m not able to incinerate it as I normally would, so I suppose that leaves your cruder methods.”

“Yeah.  Don’t suppose we can do that before we get a visit from a couple of outlaw bikers.  Won’t be able to get a fire goin’ outside for a while, I would think.  When they get here, you kids go wait in Kyra’s room.  You didn’t see a thing, got that?”  They nodded.  “If we’re being honest here, Rafael, can you tell me who your mom means by the Master, and a task he’s got for her and Juanita?”

The boy shook his head, looking bewildered.  For all Bobby could tell, he was being honest about it, but he thought about how Sam and Dean had been taught to lie to authorities from when they were much younger than Rafael.  At the best, this master was another witch, maybe the leader of their group;  at the worst, could be Lucifer himself.   He’d have to learn which was the case – later.  At that point there came a banging on the door and Bobby, catching Kyra’s eye, pointed sternly towards her bedroom.  She and Rafael bolted willingly.

“Asked you not to scare the crap out of the kid,”  Bobby muttered at Crowley, as he unbolted the door to let in Jax Teller.  The biker was rugged up against the weather, but his shaggy blond hair was soaked dark.  He scanned the room quickly before entering.

“Tig’s with Venus,”  he said.  “Your power still out?”

“Yeah,”  Bobby said, tapping the flashlight meaningfully.

Jax shrugged.  “Tig’s going to drive Venus over to our clubhouse in her car,”  he told Bobby.  “We got a generator.  It’s going to get damn cold here without power soon, so I thought you and Fergus might like to get your kid over there.  What happened with this bear?”

“Got it in the backyard,”  Bobby told him.  “It’s not going anywhere fast.”  Again, he noted the impulse in himself to give Jax the information he wanted.

“Good.”

Bobby looked at Crowley, raising his eyebrows, saw his shrug and smirk.  Crowley probably thought meeting the bikers would be fun;  he wasn’t objecting, anyhow, and Unser _had_ suggested Bobby find a way to talk to them.

“Kyra’s got a school friend over,”  he told Jax.

“That’s not a problem.  Get what you need together and follow us;  I’ll wait for you outside.”


	7. Death by Maiden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've edited this chapter because a reader brought to my attention that I'd forgotten the specifically Supernatural nature of vampires! Thanks very much for that. I've revised the chapter.

Rafael was annoyingly impressed with the news that they’d all be going over to the Sons’ clubhouse.  Hunters didn’t seem to worry him; he didn’t even recognise Crowley’s name.  But an unwashed, leather-clad pack of illiterates - Crowley shook his head in wonder - that was apparently grounds for hero worship. 

They piled into the Mercedes, with Bobby unhappily mumbling that driving in this weather would wreck the old car and that it probably wouldn’t even start.  “Well, we’re going to a mechanics business,”  Crowley told him soothingly, when the car consented to start on the third try.  The snow was changing to rain now, just as cold and damaging, but when they reached Teller Morrow Automotive Repair, Bobby followed a waving arm from somebody aboard a Harley, bringing the car safely under cover in the big garage.  So the car was better off than it would have been at his place, he decided.

They tumbled into the adjoining clubhouse in a heap;  Crowley, Bobby, Rafael and Kyra, finding a good crowd of folk there ahead of them, including quite a few women and children as well as men in black leather vests.  Dependents of the club members, Bobby supposed.  A quick look around let him know there didn’t seem to be any other gay couples, unless you could include Tig and Venus, in the sense of them being way off mainstream.  A couple of young guys were moving around placing lit lanterns by the windows and hanging a couple up from the ceiling, standing on the bar to do it.  They weren’t overloading the generator, that was good; they seemed to be using it mostly for heating.

He saw the slight grin on Crowley’s face and saw that he was watching Jax with distinct appreciation, as the VP talked to an older, hatchet-faced man whom a woman nearby helpfully identified as Clay, the president of the Sons of Anarchy.  “Behave,”  Bobby murmured in Crowley’s ear, and saw the grin widen.

“I always behave, darling.”

Bobby sighed and wondered whether Crowley would listen to a request to not call him that, or any endearment at all, while they were in the company of a club full of outlaw bikers.  Just then Clay spoke up, his voice loud and harsh, but this appeared to be the norm, as no one seemed alarmed, just turned to face the club president. 

“Everybody!  I’m glad you all made it here.  You’re welcome here tonight as friends of the Sons of Anarchy.  So try to get comfortable, ‘cause I don’t think the power company’s gonna get things going again in the town tonight.  Anybody got any security concerns, talk to me;  you got any comfort concerns, like you need more blankets or whatever, talk to my queen.”  At that, Bobby noticed the beautiful woman standing beside Clay and wondered how he hadn’t seen her before.  She was gypsy-looking; dark haired and dark eyed, probably close to Clay’s age, but so striking that he doubted she ever had a problem getting men to do what she wanted.  To his embarrassment, she saw his look and smiled slyly back at him, raising perfectly plucked eyebrows in a clear “So who are you?” question.

“Interesting,”  Crowley murmured beside him.  “A perfect feudal culture inside a supposed democracy, complete with the formal granting of guest-privilege.”

“ _What_?”

“Don’t play the redneck with me, Robert.  You know what I mean.  That’s the King of this gathering right there, and he’s just made sure we all know it.  Ah ah, the queen is on her way over, aiming straight for you, lover.”

At least Kyra and Rafael were being looked after elsewhere, Bobby thought;  he’d seen Venus shepherding them over to a group of kids busy setting up a camp of blankets in a corner.  The clubhouse was essentially a bar; with the booze and bar stools set up at the back and the rest of the space given over to tables and surprisingly comfortable looking couches and chairs.  After the growing chill of his house and the definitely freezing temperature outside, the warmth of the room was an intense relief.  He resignedly waited for the woman - the biker queen? – to reach him.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,”  she said as soon as she was within range.  “I’m Gemma Morrow, Clay’s wife.  I know everyone associated with the club, but I don’t know you…either of you,”  she added, nodding to Crowley, who returned the nod, still smirking.

“He’s okay, mom,”  said a voice and Bobby gladly noted Jax’s arrival at his side.  “He killed a creature in the street that was attacking Venus – which is why Clay wants to talk to you and Fergus,”  he added to Bobby.  “Church is in five minutes.”   Gemma waved a gracious hand, but her expression made Bobby uneasy.  She wasn’t the muscle-worshipping subservient type he associated with the idea of a biker “old lady,” whom he knew was generally considered pretty much property.  Certainly most of the younger women and girls around the clubhouse fitted that stereotype.  Still….Catching sight of Tig, his arm around Venus, he reminded himself that his assumptions just might not be totally correct.

“Thought I’d better rescue you,”  Jax added as he pushed open a door at the back of the clubhouse.  “My mom knows everything about everyone to do with the club – and she doesn’t like mysteries.  Well, not mysteries she doesn’t create herself.”  Bobby grinned at that.  “She’ll know your entire life story pretty soon;  you might as well accept that.”

Bobby looked at the wooden table in front of him.  An elaborate carving adorned its top, but he couldn’t immediately work out what it was at this angle.  He’d ask Crowley later.  Clay Morrow sat at the head of the table, with two bearded bikers either side of him.  More men filed into the room behind Bobby.  The back of his neck prickled and he asked himself why he’d been idiot enough to come here unarmed, apart from the fact that Jax had strongly recommended not bringing a gun into the clubhouse, of course.  Beside him, Crowley seemed relaxed and unbothered, which Bobby thought _had_ to be an act, but he was glad to have him there anyway.  He was used to deceiving the mundanes, but this was going to be a challenge even for him.

“Robert Singer,”  Clay said, considering him.  It wasn’t a question.  “And you’re Fergus Crowley, was it?”

“I go by Crowley,” the demon in question said.

Clay nodded like he didn’t care either way.  “So, one of you care to tell me what the fuck that is you’ve got dumped in your back yard?”

“It’s a bear, possibly rabid…”  Bobby began.

“Bullshit,” the  chief biker said calmly.  “Jax, give me your phone.”  Jax handed it to him and Clay motioned Bobby forward so that he could see the screen.  He leaned reluctantly on the table, standing between Clay and the silent guy next to him.  Yes, that was a pretty good snap of the dead gorilla-wolf against the snow.  And of course, Jax hadn’t come straight to his front door earlier.

“You helped somebody who’s important to a member of this club, which is why you’re here,”  Clay said.  A slight motion drew Bobby’s eye to Tig, now sitting at the table.  Tig nodded to him, unsmiling now.  “But Tig also says you did your damndest to convince Venus a bear attacked her, when you knew it wasn’t.  Venus also says you seemed to know what you were doing when you went after it.”

“I’m a hunter,”  Bobby retorted.  If these guys followed the wolf pack model the way he sensed they did, showing weakness was exactly the wrong thing to do.  “If it bleeds, it can die.”  _Never mind that some of these things take a powerful lot of killing._   “These things are called gorilla-wolves - not that that tells you a lot – and they’re nastier than any bear.  I never expected to see one here and that’s a fact.”

“So where the fuck do you expect to see them?” asked somebody, logically enough.

Bobby rolled his eyes;  he’d walked into that one and he had no idea how to extricate himself.

“Purgatory,”  Crowley rasped from next to him.

“What?” said another biker.

“The dimension between Heaven and Hell, darling,”  Crowley said, blinking at him.  This biker was heavily bearded, like at least half the men in the room, and he could have made two of Crowley, who wasn’t exactly light of build.  “It’s where monsters go when they die.”

“I’m Jewish,” said the biker.

“Shalom,”  Crowley said drily.  “It’s still where the monsters go when they die.”

“So what the fuck is it doing here?”

“Since it showed up a whole coupla hours ago, I haven’t worked that out yet,”  Bobby growled.  “Suggest you let me ward this building, that’ll be a start, and once we get to daylight, we can get to work finding out, but there’s too many bad things that flourish at night and I don’t know whether this creature is…”  He broke off as a rather well-timed scream interrupted from outside the building.  As one, the seated bikers shoved chairs back and grabbed guns from holsters and belts.

“Wait!”  Bobby yelled.  He met Clay’s eyes, desperately.

“Hold up!” the biker chief shouted.  “Jax, you and me, now.  Everybody else stay the fuck in here and make sure nothing gets in.  Singer, follow us.”

In the main room, the crowd of people were pushing away from the windows, trying to take refuge in the centre of the room.  Bobby found his way through with Jax and Clay, eventually able to look outside into the car park.  The overcast sky and lack of lighting meant he could see very little, but there was definitely no person being attacked anywhere near the clubhouse or the car mechanics business.

“Anyone see anything out there?”  Clay bellowed.

“No, there was just the scream,” said a young woman who seemed, Bobby thought, a bit less intimidated by Clay than most.  “No lead up, I mean, no scuffling or anybody running, and everyone’s here, all the members and their dependents.”

“Fuck this,”  Jax said, and had the door open before anyone could say any more.  He moved out into the car park, turning to be sure nothing was there, a gun already in his hand.  Not to be outdone, Clay followed his stepson, the two protecting one another’s backs with nothing needing to be said.  Bobby waited, hoping it was just some random idiot making noise in the street beyond….but it had sounded closer than that, and the shadows were very deep.  What snow had fallen here was now sludgy with rain and losing its pristine whiteness.  All the clues suggested there was nothing here any more, but Bobby’s senses were ringing alarm.

Then the woman was there out of nowhere, a slender dark form behind Clay.  She was on him without a sound, before Bobby could shout, and then Clay’s gurgling cry drowned him out.  Jax turned lightning quick, hands on the woman, desperately dragging at her head, bent against Clay’s neck.  Bobby swore softly, grimly, and advanced on her, raising his dagger – the one he had kept strapped to his leg – and reciting a prayer of destruction as he closed.  Part of his unspoken prayer was that no other vampires were close by.  If there were, they were all dead, he thought, as he brought the dagger down into her heart.

“Singer!  Get inside!”  The note of command in Jax’s voice made him scramble to his feet, away from the female vampire’s corpse in the snow.  He turned, facing Jax, whose hands and arms were now covered with Clay’s arterial blood. Way too much blood, Bobby realised furiously, knowing that he had been too late.   Jax knew that too;  he ignored the body of the fallen biker, gripping Bobby’s shoulder and shoving him towards the door before following him in and slamming the door shut.  The people inside were now crowded together in the centre;  the young brown-haired woman in the forefront.

“Clay….”  she began.

“He’s dead, Tara.  This is his blood.”  Jax raised his arms to show her, as though the blood was an anointment on him, the succeeding king.  In the next moment, though, the beautiful gypsy woman, Gemma, screamed earshatteringly and made a bolt for the door.  It took two of the bikers to stop her, one yelling in pain as Gemma apparently bit his ear.  Jax had to join the efforts to contain her, shouting over Gemma’s cries until finally his mother subsided in his arms.  Bobby looked around for Crowley and asked him softly, “You pick up any more vampires around here?”

“I didn’t pick up that one,”  the demon murmured back.  “Sorry, love, still disabled.  But you know that where you’ve got one, you probably have more.  You’d better give this lot the lecture about what vampires really are, supernatural things do exist and so on, hadn’t you?”

“I know, I know.  I’m gonna explain to Jax first off.”

“If you start scattering salt, they’re going to want to know why.”

Finally Jax was able to pass Gemma over to Tara and some of the other women.  He spoke softly to some of the bikers, who nodded and headed towards the room at the back, evidently for a “church” meeting, before coming over to Bobby.  He had wiped off as much of the blood as he could, but his clothes and hands were still stained with it.  “You know about this stuff,”  he stated bluntly.  “This the kind of thing you hunt?”

“Yeah,”  Bobby told him.  “There’s things you can do to protect the people, the building here….”

“Good.  I want you to come and explain to the members.  But first, what the hell was that?”

“A vampire.”

“Like Dracula?”

“He’s fictional, well, the vampire version was.”  Bobby could see that this was not helping.  He tried to rephrase his words, but Jax broke in again.

“In the movies if somebody gets bitten, they come back, you know, as a bloodsucker.  Clay…”

“Only if he was given the vampire’s blood, and I didn’t see anything other than a vicious attack,”  Bobby said quietly.  “He bled out so fast that nothing could have stopped it once she was on him.”  Impossible to tell from Jax’s expression, the keen blue eyes that studied him, whether he was accepting this or planning Bobby’s own demise.  The hunter added quietly, “I’ll get him inside and make sure of that, if you want.”

Jax regarded him for a few more seconds, then turned his head and called Tig’s name.  The older biker showed up at his side, face somber.

“Gemma wants you, Jax,”  he said.

“She’ll have to wait.  I want you to go with Singer, get Clay into the garage, take care of him.  Okay?”  The question was clearly rhetorical.  “Anything else shows up, follow Singer’s directions.”

“Can you get a machete?”  Bobby asked Tig as they headed to the door.  Tig nodded, unsurprised.

“Hang on,”  he said, and went off into the back area of the clubhouse, then came back with a machete just showing where he held it under his jacket.  “What do we want it for?”

“Creatures like the one that attacked Clay, they’re too fast to shoot.  You need a blade.”  Tig nodded, accepting that without comment.  Bobby didn’t think he would be quite so on board with the rest of it, but he did his best to explain, as they headed outside.  “What attacked Clay – that wasn’t a woman.  It’s something that drinks blood. Human blood."

“So you’re saying that was a vampire?”  Tig’s eyes gleamed.  “Honest to fucking God?”

“That’s right.  Except God doesn’t have any effect on them.  Forget about the crosses and holy water and all that shit.  You just have to kill the bastards, preferably with somethin’ sharp, and cut their damn heads off.”

“Works for me,”  Tig said.

Tig turned his head to study the darkness, but all was now silent outside, though Bobby could hear the sounds of crying and screaming from inside the clubhouse.  The biker and the hunter together moved Clay’s body into the garage, laying it on a tarpaulin, which they wrapped carefully around it after Bobby examined the biker’s corpse by flashlight to be sure there were no signs of Clay having ingested any vampiric blood.  Once they were done, Bobby and Tig hurried shivering back inside the clubhouse, where Jax and the other bikers waited in church to learn about the other world, the world in the shadows where monsters and hunters walked.

It was quiet when Bobby emerged into the main clubhouse area.  Strange how a room with a lot of sleeping people in it could seem quieter than a deserted one, he mused.  The kids were mostly in another room;  the young doctor, Tara, had knocked at the door of the meeting to pass a message to him that “his kids” were with the others in a guest bedroom, being looked after.  The hunter felt drained and tense;  wanting just to get out of here and back to the house, but he figured that wasn’t going to happen.  Somebody sitting at one of the tables, now shoved to one side, stood up as he approached and he belatedly recognised Crowley.

“Get sent out while the adults chat, did you?” came that familiar British drawl, sending a pleasant shiver down his spine.  Bobby glanced around, saw nobody visibly awake and nodded.

“You can call it that,”  he murmured, slipping his arms around Crowley’s waist, savouring the solid warmth of his plump form against him.  “Any more happening out there?”

“Rather a lot of lightning happening over to the east,”  the demon said quietly.  “And I think the temperature has come up at least twenty degrees; odd considering it won’t be light for several hours.  There was also some screaming and shooting in the street, but that was a good while ago.”

“Lucifer passing by in the night?”

“That would be my guess, love.”

Bobby rested his cheek against Crowley’s forehead.  He was so damn tired.  Sam and Dean would have been out there in the street, battling the monsters;  he was sure of it.  Fleetingly he wondered what Sheriff Unser was doing, what he made of these happenings, but he wasn’t going to fight his way across town to the police station just to find that out.  “I wonder what the demons are up to.”

“Yes.  I do too.”  Bobby felt the brush of Crowley’s beard against his face. 

“Felt like we were in there for hours,”  Bobby groaned, letting Crowley lead him to a seat at the table.  The couches and armchairs were all taken.  “Thanks for holding the fort out here, by the way.  I’ve got the official okay to inscribe protective sigils and the club know not to let anyone inside before I check them out.”  There was general movement from the meeting room as he spoke and the Sons came out, separating to take up positions around the room.  Two women whom Bobby had not even seen, who had been silently standing by the doors, moved back towards the main group and settled themselves in blankets.  Some hunter he was.  “I’d kill for some coffee.”

“There’s a sweetbutt in the kitchen.  Shall I ask her?”

“A _what_?”

Crowley drew back from him a little so that Bobby could see his grin.  “Bikers’ groupie, darling.  Young, attractive, scanty clothing, already told me that if I swing both ways, feel free to look her up later.  Only with your permission, love, of course.  She passed the same offer on to you.”

“Just the coffee right now,”  Bobby grumbled at him, which had Crowley snickering all the way to the kitchen.  Jax came up to him just as the demon got back with a large mug of black coffee for Bobby.

“I’ll start with marking the sigils then,”  Crowley said, with a note of inquiry as he regarded Jax, who nodded.  The new leader of the Sons looked as weary as Bobby, sitting down opposite him and rubbing his eyes.

“I still don’t have a fucking clue how that’s supposed to help,”  he said.

“They’ll warn us if certain things try to break in.”

 “So if we hadn’t gone out…”

“Clay would be alive.  Maybe.  But tell me;  if some attractive young woman shows up at the door and asks to come in, do you think anyone would try to stop her?  She could’ve hidden what she was and attacked him, or any of us, while we were sleeping.”

“Probably not,”  Jax admitted.  He was definitely shaken, Bobby thought, but not exactly grieving for his stepfather.    “Okay, no.  But why are things showing up _now_?  You said it was not the usual for you to have to kill one of those gorilla things _and_ a vampire to take someone in front of all these witnesses.”

“No.  But it’s a damn long story if I’m to even suggest possible reasons.”

“We got awhile.”

“Sure do,”  Bobby agreed, taking a couple more swigs of the coffee, which was nearly strong enough to stand up on its own.  His tired mind twinged a little with signs of returning life.  He watched Crowley moving around the edge of the clubhouse, murmuring to himself as he marked the signs which would flare awake if challenged.  Putting up a salt line would be the normal next step, but hard to explain how that would trap Crowley inside as well as keep monsters out.  Or would it?  “Any sign of the power coming back on anywhere?”

“Not anywhere we can see it,”  the biker shrugged.  “Nobody’s got a radio either, so someone’s gonna have to ride around and see.  I want to wait for daylight before I send anyone on that job.”

Bobby nodded agreement, realising that Jax was still watching him, waiting for him to come good on the story.  It was truth that the bikers had been good listeners, if somewhat profane in the comments, during his 101 of protective measures.  Somebody even had a setup to cast his own bullets and there were plans to melt down all available silver, soon as they could see straight, as that other Bobby, Bobby Munson I’m-Jewish, had put it.  “Okay,”  he said, taking another gulp of the coffee, which was starting to work.  “I already told you how monsters are real; vampires and werewolves and ghosts, and a lot of things not so well known.  Angels and demons, they’re also real things.”

“What the fuck,”  Jax said, like a prayer.  “So how about Heaven and Hell?”

“Same.”

“And God?”

“Yeah, but he’s not around so much.”

Jax considered this thoughtfully, then called towards the kitchen, “Hey, how about a beer over here!”  The girl Crowley had termed a “sweetbutt” immediately scurried over with a bottle of Coors, already opened, for Jax.  He glanced briefly at her, then ignored her, which made Bobby raise his eyebrows a little.  Not that the girl appeared to mind.   “And….the other guy?”  the biker continued.  “You know, Satan?”

“Unfortunately, he _is_ around.   And that leads me to what could be goin’ on around us right now…”


	8. Witches In Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So why is Lucifer on our side, in my AU? No Mary to push him back through, that's why. :-)

By the time Bobby finished, he had an audience of most of the Sons.  Some of the club’s dependents had woken up and were listening too, in the near dark, with only a couple of flashlights set up like lanterns on the tables.  At Bobby’s suggestion, the lights had been moved away from the windows, to enable guards to better see what was happening outside.  It made him feel like some old shaman in a cave, telling myth stories to the tribe.  _Is that what we’re going back to?_   Then he felt a hand on his shoulder,  noted Crowley standing close behind him, and had to fight the urge to jump away in embarrassment.  Why the hell was Crowley suddenly all PDA with a mob of bikers staring at them?

But they weren’t.  Jax did look up, but then nodded to Crowley and glanced back to Bobby.  The others still seemed absorbed by what he’d been saying….which was what?  Bobby asked himself.  The benefits of that coffee were pretty shortlived, and now the dregs of it were cold.  “You need to sleep,”  Crowley said.  “I can keep watch.”

“You need to sleep too, dontcha?”  Tig asked.

“No, actually I don’t.”

“Okay.”  Tig shrugged.  “But I want some of whatever you’re taking.”

“Demon blood and sulphur in my veins, darling.”

“Whatever floats your boat, dude.”

Only Jax focused on Crowley for a moment as though suspecting that his words were more than just fluff.  “You can use my room,”  he said.  “C’mon, I’ll show you.  Probably have to kick some people out of it.”

They interrupted one couple on a bed of blankets, and another pair who were possibly just trying to sleep, also on the floor.  Nobody had even tried to take over Jax’s bed, which Bobby found impressive, as he did the way Jax only had to look around the room and say, “Everybody out,” before the room was suddenly vacant.  “Wish I could bottle that,”  he had to say. “I have to yell and even then half the time nobody listens to me.”

“They know I don’t bluff,”  Jax said.  “Okay, all yours.  Bed’s pretty clean;  I think the sheets got changed last week. And there’s a bottle of Scotch in the cabinet over there;  help yourself.  I’ll come get you in the morning.”

After the blond biker had left, Bobby sat down heavily on the bed, feeling like his legs were about to give way if he didn’t.  Fatigue and headache pounded through his mind and he was barely aware of Crowley telling him to hold his arms out and then pulling his jacket off for him.  “Shoes,”  the demon said patiently, kneeling to slip them off him.

“Honestly not in the mood,”  Bobby slurred.

“I got that, darling.  All right, I suppose that will do.  Move over here, move your legs under the covers.  And the other leg.  _And_ the other leg, Robert.  Very good!”  The bedcovers settled over Bobby again and that was the last he knew until he heard a voice speaking close to him and woke up to see Jax Teller regarding him with amusement.

“Fergus said you were out cold from two am.  It’s nearly seven now, you got to get up.  There’s been some bad shit happening in town.”

The sun was up and he was alone in the bed.  After he registered those things, Bobby noted that he was still mostly dressed except for shoes and jacket which somebody – not him – had placed neatly on a chair.  He took a whiff under his arm and decided it wasn’t bad enough for anybody to object to for at least a day.  Besides, Jax had sounded tense there.  There was a small bathroom ensuite, so he made do with a quick wash, promising himself he’d grab a change of clothes from home soon as he had the chance – before emerging into the main clubroom.  A young woman – girl really – smiled at him and pressed a large mug of black coffee into his hand.  “You want breakfast?” she asked.

“Uh, in a few.  I want to find out what’s been happening first.”

“Some of the guys went out as soon as it got light,”  she said.  “It’s a whole lot warmer than yesterday, really weird!  But they came back all shook up and talked to the other members – that was half an hour ago maybe – and then Jax woke you up.”

“Ah – do you happen to know where my partner and the kids have got to?”

“In the kids’ room, I think.”

“Singer!”  Jax called, from the meeting room entrance.  Bobby mouthed “thank you!” to the girl and hurried over.  He found the other Sons on their feet in the meeting room, evidently ready to head out.  “Tig, tell him what you told me.”

“It’s bad, man,”  Tig said, shaking his head.  “We rode into the centre of town and all the way there’s bodies just lyin’ around, in the yards, on the sidewalks, on top of cars, whatever.  All torn up like something just ripped into ‘em.  We went by the police station and same thing…”

“Did you see Unser?”

“Not him, but there’s some dead cops.  Not that I’m that broken up about dead cops but you know, I like there to be a _reason_ …”

“Stick to the point, Tig,” growled a thick Scottish voice and Bobby glanced at that biker, whom he’d heard several times but hadn’t really registered.  Another name that was more like something he’d call a dog – Chib or Chibs.  Another thing he better remember never to say out loud to these guys.

“That is the point,”  Tig objected.  “The power’s still off everywhere, we went into a few places and hit a few switches and nothing.”

“Did you find any survivors?”

 “Oh sure;  lots of folks made it through.  There’s a hellova traffic jam on all the roads out….lot of dead folks there too.  Some guy was talking about people jumping from the roofs of the cars and ripping out throats.”

“The rest of the Nest, maybe,”  Bobby murmured.  “The vampires,”  he added when he saw several sets of confused eyes focused on him.  “I need to go talk to some of the survivors,”  he said.  “In case you’re wonderin’, this is _not_ the kind of scale I’m used to for a job.  This feels like the gates of goddamned Hell burst open and let ‘em all out for a party.  Which Lucifer could have done, just because he thought it would be a fun thing.  The temperature fluctuations are another sign he’s involved, but not conclusive.”

“Can you go with him, Tig?”  Jax asked and the other biker nodded.

Bobby looked in on the kids’ room before he left.  He found Kyra helping to wrangle some of the littler ones and Rafael entertaining a solemn-looking baby bundled up in a red blanket on his lap.  He was waving some sort of doll in front of it, but Bobby never saw it blink.  “I need to go talk to some of the townspeople about what they saw last night,”  he told the kids, pulling them aside from the others – except the baby, which Rafael brought with him - and the two women on caretaker duty.

“When can we go home?”  Kyra asked.

“Not sure, sweetheart;  I have to see what things are like outside first.”  He glanced at the other kids in the room, noting that Kyra and Rafael were the oldest.  Next along was a girl of maybe eleven and a slightly younger boy, the others seemed to range from toddlers to about six years.  He would have expected Rafael to be more restive than Kyra, but he only listened seriously as Bobby told them a (censored) version of Tig’s report.  “Can you wait here till I get back?”  A moment later the nagging feeling of wrongness clarified itself.  “And did you see Crowley?  I was told he’d come to see you.”

“He did, but that was ages ago,”  Kyra said, frowning.  “It was still dark out and most of the kids here were asleep, but I couldn’t.  We had one night light.  He came in and talked to me for a bit, said you were sleeping like the dead or the undead – I don’t know why but he thought that was funny – so he might as well make the most of his time.  Whatever that meant.”

“It means he’s out doing his own thing,”  Bobby told her.  “You hear anything from your folks, Rafael?”

The boy shook his head.  “My phone’s out of power since a few hours ago.  But I think they will check here, once they ask around and find that the Sons made it through.”

He glanced at the baby when it made a fretful noise, gently rocking it until it quieted, and Bobby had to grin.  “You got little cousins or something, Rafael?  I’m guessin’ no brothers or sisters?”

“No, but I do have small cousins,”  Rafael confirmed.  “I tried to get Kyra to hold this one but she wouldn’t.”

“I’ll drop her!”  Kyra warned.  Which was pretty much Bobby’s reaction too, the hunter thought.  He escaped, with promises to let them know what he found out, and to organise a trip home for clothes as soon as might be.

Tig laughed when Bobby told him about the kids and the baby.  “You think it’s too soon for me to have a talk with Kyra about how a man who’s good with babies is probably a keeper?”  Bobby asked as they went outside. 

“I dunno.  I guess she’ll make up her own mind about that.  She been with you a long time?”

“Uh no….we fostered her about three months ago now.”

“Wow,”  Tig said simply, as he got into the passenger side of the black Mercedes.  “Because she’s your kid, man;  everybody can see it.”  He patted Bobby’s shoulder.  “You make a good dad.  Now let’s go look at some bad shit.”

*

Tig had not exaggerated.  Some force, which Bobby knew had to be much greater than a single creature, or even a pack, had torn this good-sized town apart.  Like a storm with fangs and claws and an unending thirst for blood.  They found the first bodies lying by the side of the road in a muddy puddle of melted snow, both uniformed police officers.  Bobby pulled over some distance behind to examine this scene.  When he turned to see whether Tig was following, the biker stood nearby, holding a pistol casually in front of him.  “It’s cool, man, I’ve got your back,”  he said.  Bobby nodded, trying to look as though he had total trust in Tig.

He learned nothing new from his investigation;  he was no forensic scientist and the miniscule details were not known to him.  There were no obvious physical signs here, no scraps of fur or claws or burned out eyes or anything that would lead to knowledge of the attackers’ species.  So he said a silent prayer for the souls of the departed officers, sure that two who had died in the line of duty didn’t need anybody to help them go to the right place.  _If there is a right place any more._  

Soon he was numb.  Bodies lay everywhere, some singly; some groups, with signs that some people had tried to protect others.  They went to the police station, but did not find Sheriff Unser, or anyone else moving around.  Bobby asked Tig to stand ready, then went into the lobby and called out, loudly enough for anyone in the building to hear him.  They waited for several tense minutes, then Bobby muttered in frustration and walked back outside.  “Where now?”  Tig asked.

Bobby, not wanting to say it, sighed quietly and looked down the deserted road.  “The schools,”  he said. 

“It happened overnight, nobody would’ve been there,”  Tig said.

“It’s still happening,”  Bobby answered.

Still, he was intensely relieved to discover that Tig was correct.  The freak weather had caused the authorities to declare no school today anyway.  Not that this would have kept the kids any safer than other citizens, the hunter thought.  He got back into the car after a quick circuit of the middle school, deciding that this would do, he had no more energy for looking at horror and death.  Not today.  The live people they had seen were no help; they came to the car and babbled about seeing impossible things in the storm, demanding to know when help would be coming.  No one seemed to know anything of what was going on beyond the town and Bobby found no one who could clearly describe any creature or being that had been abroad in the night.  All he could do was try to reassure them, but when that didn’t work, Tig pointed a gun and told the milling people to back the fuck off.  “Go talk to the mayor, that’s what the bastard is for.”

“There was a damn big bloodstain outside the mayor’s office,”  Bobby reminded him when they were on their way.

“Oh yeah,” said Tig, but he did not seem worried.

“I’m gonna head back.”

*

“Where’s Crowley?”  Bobby hardly recognised his own voice; guttural, dull, like something mechanical.  There were people all around in the car park of the mechanics business and the clubhouse, moving, talking.  Somewhere he heard Jax giving orders, the rumble of engines in the background, but the hunter didn’t care where they were going or what they were doing.  He knew, deep down, that the demon was probably still gone on whatever business he had, that this devastation had to be more than just one isolated town.

“He’s here, Bobby…”  Tig, it was, speaking behind him, and then that familiar face, that scent of cologne and sulphur, coming into his embrace.  Bobby wrapped his arms tightly around him, his cheek pressed into Crowley’s beard.  He wasn’t caring any more who saw them or what the hell they thought about it, all he could think about was how shit scared he had been, that he wasn’t going to find Crowley or see him…

“Where were you?”  he muttered, expecting the usual glib answer.  “Town’s in bloody pieces.”

“I know, love.  I went to learn more about Rafael’s family and where they might be.”  Crowley’s voice was quiet, level, the Cockney-rasp in his words almost gentle.  “Thought that could be a clue as to what’s dropped on us.”

“Thought it was the end of the damn world,”  Bobby said.

“Not far off, love.”

“Come on, get inside,”  Tig said, patting his shoulder and steering both him and Crowley, who stayed in Bobby’s embrace as he was shuffled along.  The crowd of people moved with them, seeking the sanctuary of the Sons’ clubhouse; gate and door clanging shut behind them.  Thick clouds of dust roiled in the street and up into the sky, blanketing it against the sun, so that only a feeble orange light penetrated below.  Bobby looked up as he moved through the door, noting that day itself was fading, though it couldn’t be past four in the afternoon.  _End of all things._  

*

He gave his report, along with Tig, that evening when everyone in the clubhouse assembled for meeting and information.  The scale of the devastation seemed to touch even the bikers, though nobody seemed that worried about their missing sheriff.  Then Jax gave him the okay to finish the warding around the clubhouse.  He had done some, but not the complete job he needed to do before darkness fell.  Crowley got up and came around with him, assisting where he could, both of them still listening to the conversation.

“We have to know what’s going on beyond this town.”  Jax, and not for the first time.  “Somewhere’s got power and can get hold of news, tell us when help’s coming.”

“We don’t need their fucking help,”  Bobby Munson growled.

“Don’t be a moron, Bobby,”  the young leader said calmly.  “We’re going to get as hungry as anybody else soon.  That’s why some of the guys are down in the stores getting us supplies, but they say the shelves are damn near bare already with all the looting.  Half the people might be missing or dead, but that leaves a lot of hungry townsfolk.”

“Might need to move some of the merchandise further out of town if we’re gonna see the National Guard around here,”  Chibs commented, and Jax nodded to him.

“Good call.  Anything anyone’s got in their house or storing in a shed or wherever, get it and shift it to the outer location.  Nothing here at the clubhouse beyond personal arms?”  Chibs shook his head.   The hunter glanced back towards the people – 30-odd of them – and then at Crowley.

“See the way they’re all huddling in the centre of the room?  Nobody wants to be near the windows.”

“Monkeys can learn,”  Crowley said and Bobby aimed a cuff at him, which didn’t land.

“C’mon, let’s go around the outside.”

Seeing him open the door, Jax stopped the discussion and sent Tig to accompany them.  Bobby wanted to object, to say this was one area where they would probably have to look after Tig, not the other way around, but something about the way Jax looked and spoke kept him silent.  He needed to talk to Crowley about his powers, though, find out whether anything had come back, but though nothing had fazed Tig so far, Bobby still didn’t want to say things like “King of Hell” in the biker’s hearing.  Crowley _had_ referred to Purgatory and so far no one had called him on his knowledge, but surely they would, if much more was said on the subject.

“I’m gonna walk around the building and sort of mumble,”  Bobby explained to Tig.  “Crowley’s gonna make sure I don’t walk into anything and you…”

“I’ll shoot any monsters that show up.”  Tig had, the hunter decided, a pretty good grasp of their respective roles.

“You got silver ammo?”

“Not yet…”

“Here.”  The hunter passed Tig his shotgun, which the biker handled expertly and nodded.  They set off.  Darkness was probably only minutes away.  The light was so dull due to all the cloud that it was difficult to tell, though it was very early for a summer twilight.  Bobby glanced at the sky and wondered whether that was more than just cloud – had some goddamned volcano erupted or something?  With no communications, anything more than 10 miles away could have happened and they wouldn’t know.  He didn’t even know if the boys were on their way here.  At least it wasn’t so cold; almost back to normal summer, which was still weird.

Bobby was almost too weary to think by the time they were done, and he could go to bed.  He had spoken to Kyra only briefly and she did not ask him about going back to the house.  Jax had made plans about travelling to the next town where he could hopefully get some news, but Bobby didn’t think he was included in that.  He hoped not.  Crowley accompanied him to the room now treated as theirs, and closed the door firmly, saying a few words under his breath as he tapped it.  “Got your powers back?”

“No, love, that’s a simple lock spell.  Anybody that comes to the door will tend to forget why he did so and wander off again, unless he really wants to talk to us.”

“Drunk bikers,”  Bobby pointed out.  “That’s gonna happen anyway.”   He yawned and started to take his clothes off, trying to focus his last remaining brain cells.  “So what did you find at the witches’ house?”

“For a start, it took me two hours to get there on foot.  I need to learn to drive that automobile, Robert, as soon as possible.  But anyway, I found the house and got past the protections on it – not very good, no wonder they didn’t qualify for the Grand Coven….”

“Crowley!”

“… and searched the interior.  I have their Books of Shadows and some ingredients I was running short on.  What I did not find was anything that said “Going to meet the Master at such and such a place on this date to help fulfil his evil plan of blah blah blah.”

“Maybe it’s coded somewhere in the Shadows.”

“That’s what you’re for, darling.”  He eyed Bobby, now down to boxers and dropping his clothing on a chair, then began to unbutton himself as he talked.  “Well, maybe also for one or two other things.  But witches don’t normally scribble to-do lists in their journals, those are for spells and suchlike.”

“So they’re not anything special as witches,”  Bobby mumbled, thinking aloud.  Crowley made a “Mmm” noise as he undressed.  “Maybe they’re _not_ anything special…”

“You are tired, aren’t you, darling?”

“Don’t patronise me, jackass, I’m goin’ somewhere with this.  Maybe they’re not special, maybe they went to this meeting because all the witches went to it, Grand Coveners or not, maybe someone called all of them, because even if they’re weak as individuals, you put a lot of witches together and they’re nuclear powered.  If we can get in touch with some other hunters, they might know – a lot of hunters know at least one witch – they might know if that person’s missing.  And if they’re _all_ missing, or away from home…”

The bed creaked loudly as Crowley, now naked, excitedly jumped on it, landing on Bobby, who uffed in pain.  “You are a genius, love!”  He pulled himself over the flattened hunter, placed his hands either side of Bobby’s head and leaned down to kiss him deeply.  The kiss and the contact of his body brought a sudden spark of alertness to Bobby’s mind and he slid his hands around to Crowley’s back, gasping as he tried to recover the air just forced out of him.

“Only if I’m right, and I don’t know how we’re gonna be sure of it.”

“Rafael might know if other witches are meeting his mother and aunt.”

“Could you ask your – uh, Rowena?”

“Don’t have her cell number,”  Crowley snapped.  “I don’t think she even knows what a cell phone is.”

“She’s lived all the way through on the surface since the 1600s, hasn’t she;  she’s got to know modern tech?”

“Lived.  She may not have survived Lucifer, remember.”

“You thought she did.”

“Let’s ask Rafael tomorrow,”  Crowley said, shying from the question.  “And there may be something in the Shadows about where nearby covens are.  It’ll be coded, but I’m sure we can deal with that.”

“Yeah.”  He was tired, given the last 48 hours or whatever it was, but Crowley lying on him was definitely having an effect and damn it, he didn’t want to pike out and go to sleep.  He rubbed Crowley’s back, stroking down to his ass, and got a pleased mumble in return and a wriggle that indicated the demon was also responding to the contact between them.  “Feels good?”

“Mmm,”  Crowley said.  “Come on, love.”

Bobby realised he might actually manage it tonight if only…”You sure about that door spell?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re not just sayin’ it because you want me to…”

“I would _never_ , darling.”

“Right…”

Later, sated and content, they lay together.  Bobby’s weariness had returned and he was nearly asleep, grateful that nothing had tried to break through his wards during the crucial time.  Now, if he could only sleep.  “Stay here,”  he murmured against Crowley.  “Stay till I wake.”  If Crowley answered, Bobby was not awake to hear it.

*

Bobby roused from deep sleep to find someone shaking him gently, but it didn’t matter how gentle they were to the hunter, who growled annoyance and pushed the hand away.  “It’s still freaking _dark_ ,”  he muttered, able to identify Crowley now.

“No it isn’t, love, you have a blanket over your head.”

“He always like this in the morning?” asked another voice, startling Bobby.  He emerged to stare balefully at Jax Teller, who was grinning back at him.

“Yes,”  Crowley told him.

“Marie, we need the coffee in here now.”

A young blond girl hurried in, with a steaming mug in her hands which she carefully passed to Bobby after ensuring he was awake enough to hold it.  The hunter was in fact all the way awake;  he hadn’t reached his present age – well, one trip to Heaven notwithstanding – by being slow on the uptake, but growling at folks when they disturbed you did sometimes make them go away.  Marie was also grinning.  “I’ve got some bacon and eggs nearly ready if you want,”  she offered.

“Couldn’t face it, but thanks,”  Bobby told her.  “Jax, why’re you doing this?”

“Trip to Stockton this morning,”  the biker leader said.  “I wasn’t going to haul you two along but Crowley was talking about witches last night and it made me think of somebody we ought to check on.”

“You know a witch in Stockton?”

“Not me,”  Jax said hastily.  “Tara got the info from one of the sweetbutts and she brought up the name.  This witch could’ve just been one of those fakes who pretend to read people’s fortunes, but I told Rafael her name and he said his folks know her and that she never leaves her house.  Anyone wanting a reading has to visit her at home and she won’t see more than one person at a time.  I figured if anybody could’ve hidden away from any troubles in Stockton, it’d be her.”

“Sounds like a sensible lady.  What’s her name?”

“Asha Wintergreen.”

“Sure it is,”  Bobby said.  The name wasn’t familiar but that didn’t mean much;  witches changed names as often as their underwear.  Her real name was probably more like Amy Winter or Jane Green.   He itched to call up Garth and check with him;  the guy was a nutter, but collected and remembered information almost as well as Bobby himself.  He drank some of the coffee and felt the day become more bearable around him.  “Now, everybody clear out so I can get washed and dressed.”


	9. Lord of this World

“Kyra’s going to kill me,”  Rafael said.

“You should have brought her along,”  Crowley commented to Bobby. 

“Oh thanks, you’re a great help.”

Bobby guided the black Mercedes carefully along the road.  There were dozens of abandoned vehicles in their path, or maybe not exactly abandoned.  He could see bloodstains and what might have been bodies inside some of them.  Jax and some of the other bikers had ridden ahead of them all of the twenty miles or so to the big coastal town of Stockton – three times the population of Charming -  where they were hoping to find restored power, news and perhaps an agoraphobic witch with some information.

Rafael sat behind Crowley in the back seat, clearly not happy with this situation.  Bobby himself wasn’t wild about having even one kid along, but from what he’d heard, they might well need somebody this witch knew, who wasn’t threatening to her.  He’d deal with Kyra’s anger himself when they got back.  Tig and Venus had promised to keep an eye on her.

They drove into Stockton’s main street, where the bikers had already spread out, off their bikes and with weapons in their hands.  The businesses there were all closed and shuttered and not a soul was abroad to be seen.  Bobby looked at the broken branches from street trees, which looked as though they had been torn off and flung heedlessly about.  One car was on its roof in the centre of the street.  At least the weather was back to “normal,”  he thought;  it was as though the flurry of winter had never been.  He parked the car where Jax indicated, close to a front window with silvery, feathery things in view and cast a resigned look back at the King of Hell riding shotgun, and the junior witch in his back seat.

“You two behave,”  he warned, and got out without waiting for their replies.  They both joined him on the sidewalk.  At the shop’s door, he motioned Rafael forward.  “Call out to her and if she’s there, do your best to get her to come talk to me.”

As per arrangement, the bikers were staying at a distance, creating what Bobby thought of as a circle of steel around them, which would take care of any mundane threats.  Nearby, Crowley faced outwards, clearly not confident that the Sons were up to the task.   Or, Bobby suspected, believed that _he_ was the only one who truly understood the situation.  Rafael went to the door and knocked, giving it a few moments before he raised his voice.  “Asha!  This is Rafael Catalano, Maria Catalano’s son.  I’m here with friends who need your advice.”  Still Bobby couldn’t hear any response, whether movement or voice.  He was about to tell Rafael to try again when the boy alerted, clearly hearing something which the old hunter could not.  “Asha?”  he asked.  “Are you all right?”

This time Bobby could hear the murmuring voice, though he still couldn’t pick out words.  Rafael listened intently.  “We can get you supplies in return for a reading, if you like,”  he said, looking questioningly at Bobby, who nodded hard.  More murmuring.  “Uh, one friend, his name is Bobby Singer.  Can he come inside with me?”  After a moment.  “I can wait in the hall while you give him the reading.”  To Bobby he said, “You go inside first.  There’s a door off the hall, that leads to her sitting room, it’s got material all over the walls kinda like a tent.  You go in there and sit down and then she’ll do your reading.”

“Look, kid, I don’t want a fortune telling…”

“We kind of do,”  Rafael said.  “And Asha won’t talk to you otherwise.”

“Okay,”  Bobby agreed.  He quickly crossed the road again to Jax, Crowley keeping pace with him, and told the Sons’ leader what had been discussed.  The biker leader sent two of his people off to scrounge surrounding shops for groceries.  “If you’re not out in an hour we’ll come in for you,”  he said.

“If I’m not out in an hour, that means there’s somethin’ in there that can chew the lot of you up like candy,”  Bobby told him.  “So you get on your bikes and ride, and forget you ever heard of me.”

Jax laughed, but when he accidentally met Crowley’s gaze, he stopped.  Bobby followed his look and saw that the red flickers of hellflame were rising in the King’s eyes.  Crowley, without his demonic abilities, shouldn’t have been able to frighten someone like Jax.  With that black suit, he looked like an accountant or an undertaker.  His beard needed a trim; that was the only sign that Crowley’s powers hadn’t been working as they should.  Had that changed?  He had done nothing but look at Jax, but Bobby could see that the biker was working to maintain control and not step back.  After a moment Crowley turned away, towards him.

“I don’t pick up any sense of much power in there,”  he told Bobby.  “I think you’ll be all right.  Ask her about your love life while you’ve got the chance.”

“Ha.”  Bobby headed for the door, which was unlocked.  Had it been unlocked all along, he wondered.  He hadn’t heard anyone unlock it and couldn’t remember whether Rafael had tested it.  It opened on to a dark hallway with a musty smell, which he made sure was empty before he closed the door behind himself.  Light trickled in through a semi-open door to the right and he went through it, finding himself in a room resembling a giant circus tent, all swathed in parachute silk in crazy purple and red and gold patterns.  The light was filtered through a fall of the silk covering a window;  enough to see but you wouldn’t be able to read anything in it.  Two armchairs, one close to him, a small black wooden table between them.  Bobby carefully settled himself into the closest chair and waited.

He blinked.  There was a woman seated in the other chair.  He had not been aware of her passing him and there was no other door that he could see.  Nor was he in the habit of nodding off while waiting for a strange witch to show up.  He scrutinised her; a woman around her late fifties, with a long fall of dead-silver hair that looked much older than her face, which was pale, as though she never saw the sun.  She should have been wearing some ornate gown in black, he thought, but instead she was practically dressed in jeans and a heavy orange sweater, against the distinct chill in the room.

“Hunter,”  she greeted him.  Her eyes were creepy, the same silver shade as her hair, as though she was blind.  But she seemed to focus on his face well enough, just as she clearly knew what he was.

Bobby cast around for the best way to start this off and came up blank.  “You know what happened around this area and in Charming last night?” he asked.  She nodded, a single dip of her chin, silver eyes still fixed on him.  “So tell me!”

“Is that your question?”  Asha Wintergreen asked in reply. 

Bobby struggled to control his impatience.  “I got a dozen, darlin’.  Are the rest of the witches all gone to do this Master’s bidding?  Is he Lucifer?  Don’t you know what’ll come down if he rules on this plane?”

“It already belongs to him,”  she said.  “And yes, he’s put a compulsion on all the fools who swore to him, never thinking they’d be held to their oaths.   There’ve always been families of witches living in this area, and we’ve always barred it to hunters, which brings a mystery as to how you were able to come here.  We waited for Him through the generations, keeping the blood pure and strong, and when he rose, he commanded us.”  She smiled slightly and Bobby shivered, fancying that the temperature plummeted around him.  He didn’t want to meet her eyes, knew better than to do it, but when she spoke again, he found himself looking to her.  “Yes, a mystery indeed.  You are not a young man, ….yet at the same time you are a child of only a few months!  Did that help you to slip through the spells, I wonder?”

Bobby had no intention of explaining that.  He gritted his teeth against the words.  Any weakness, he thought, must lie in the agoraphobia which trapped her in her house.  There was no flaw he could detect in the magic which flowed thick and compelling around him.  She was certainly strong enough to keep Crowley from realising the truth of her strength and that meant;  if Lucifer had not called her with the rest, there was another reason for that which he wasn’t going to like.  “Where is Lucifer?” he managed to demand at last.  “What in the name of all that’s holy has happened?  Why hasn’t any help reached us?”

“The nations have fallen,”  the witch said, her gaze distant now, travelling beyond the house and her mortal prison.  “Purgatory’s gates are broken and its creatures roam free to feed upon the humans of this realm, bringing with them a thousand plagues of sickness and destruction.  Heaven bars itself away and Hell falls into its own pit of fires and blood.”   She came back to herself then, a gleam of maliciousness in her look.  “But most people come to me for readings on their own fortunes, hunter;  don’t you wish to know what will befall you in the times to come?  Never mind asking, I’ll tell you as a bonus.”  Her eyes rolled back in her head, seemingly involuntarily, and she slumped into her chair.  “Oh, it’s not you he should fear, old man.  You’re only her protector, foolish old man who thinks he’s found love again in the evening of his life.  Love with a _demon_.  The girl will grow into the weapon which can bring down the Morning Star.”   She drew in a gasping breath and said, her voice suddenly ordinary conversational once more. “The Master won’t have that, of course.  He will have all of you dead and cast into the Empty before she ever has a chance to mature into her power and harm him, or his nephilim son.”

Her head drooped, the silver hair casting a curtain over her face.  She looked near to collapse.  As Bobby stared, she gasped again and straightened, rubbing her eyes.  “Well?  Whatever you got, that’s what you get.  Leave my house now and send the boy in here to arrange my payment.”

Bobby itched to send a bullet into her, or a cleansing shaft of sharp metal.  But she was only Lucifer’s creature, and like as not, it wasn’t even Asha Wintergreen’s decision to serve what, and how she did.  Lucifer was not known for giving his minions free and informed choices.  He got to his feet and walked out, passing Rafael crouched in the hall.  “She wants to talk to you,”  he mumbled, opened the door and found himself in chilly twilight, with the bikers clustered closer together now, all staring at him. 

“What the fuck, man,”  Jax said.  “You were in there for hours.  Fergus wouldn’t let us go in after you.”

“It was only a few minutes,”  Bobby frowned.  He looked for Crowley, found him standing near Tig, with whom he had apparently been conversing.  “Crowley?  How long was I in there?”

The demon was staring intently at him and now crossed to him, placing his hand on Bobby’s cheek, studying him carefully.  He murmured a sequence of words – Bobby thought they were Enochian but was not certain – and nodded slightly;  perhaps satisfaction that the hunter had not burst into flames in front of him.  “Look at the sky, Robert,”  he said and the bemused hunter did, feeling a jolt of panic as he saw where the sun was.  He looked at his watch, glad for once that he was one of the holdouts who still told the time by wristwatch, not mobile phone.  It gave 12.23.  But the sun….

“Goin’ on four in the afternoon,”  he muttered.  “No offence but how could you – without, um, being really obvious - stop a gang of one percenters from busting in that witch’s door?”

“Jax is exaggerating my powers just a little.  They indeed tried, but they could not touch that door.  They convinced themselves they had chosen to back off.”  His voice dropped very low on the last sentence.

“Why are you lookin’ at me like that?  You’re creeping me out.”

“Needed to make sure you were still you, darling.”

Almost violently, Bobby moved forward, kissing him hard on the mouth, earning a round of applause from the assembled bikers.  “That convince you, dipshit?” he asked and Crowley, once Bobby let him go, nodded and smiled briefly.

“Ever the romantic, Robert.”  But the smile didn’t reach his eyes as he continued to study Bobby, clearly shaken more than he wanted to admit.  They had to get somewhere private and talk, the hunter thought.  He glanced at Rafael, who looked tense and miserable, his arms around himself.  He clearly wasn’t expecting anything good to come of any future conversations with his companions.  Bobby came to a decision and looked towards Jax, taking several steps towards him.

“When we get back to Charming, I want to go back to my house,”  he told the biker.  “I’ll come in for any meetings you want, anything like that.  But this thing isn’t gonna blow over any time soon and we need our own base.”

Jax nodded.  “Makes sense,”  he said slowly.  “Did Asha know anything – she hear any news reports or shit like that?”

 _Shit like that_ did, Bobby thought, accurately describe most of the news reports he had ever heard in his life, but it didn’t come close to what Asha had babbled in her trance, or whatever it had been. 

“Not regular news.  It was kinda like the Bible, Book of Revelations stuff.  She said the nations have has fallen.  Purgatory’s gates broken – monsters, thousands of plagues.”

“End of the fucking world,”  Bobby Munson said softly.

 “Or she could just be stoned,”  another biker suggested.  Bobby glanced at him;  he was a younger guy, Puerto Rican by the look of him, with elaborate tattooing over his entire head, bald except for a cropped Mohawk.  His smirk indicated he was in some part winding up Munson, who was probably the closest the Sons had to an intellectual.  Still, he did have a point.  Asha was an unknown quantity and if he believed the end-of-the-world ranting, he also had to give credence to the more personal predictions she’d trotted out and he did _not_ want to get close to that.

“What else?”  Jax asked and reluctantly Bobby recited Asha’s words in detail, as well as he could remember, leaving out the personal stuff to do with him and Kyra.

“That’s it?  You were in there that long for that?”

“For me it was only a few minutes.”

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”   Jax almost shouted the words, then turned to scan the empty street and the buildings along it.  “Come on.  Let’s get going.  We’ll circle around Stockton, see if we can find anyone who knows any fucking thing.”

Bobby put a hand on Crowley’s arm as they headed for the Mercedes, Rafael tagging behind them.  “Crowley – your eyes.”

“I’m aware, love.”

“When did that come back?  How about the rest of your powers?”

Crowley turned towards him as though he meant to answer and then froze, staring rigidly past Bobby, back towards the witch’s closed house.  Asha stood there on the sidewalk, the wind blowing her silver-gray mane around in sudden wildness, whipping the air up out of calmness.  Rafael cried out some words a kid his age shouldn’t even have known, at least in Bobby’s day.  The hunter heard the clicks of safeties being taken off guns, in a semicircle around him.  He moved forward, close enough to see the blankness of the witch’s pale eyes, the jerkiness of her movements.  Whoever was in control of Asha’s body, it wasn’t the woman herself.   Then as a few more seconds passed, he knew who it was.

“Hello there, Mr Singer,”  Asha’s mouth said, twisting in a terrible grin which shouldn’t have looked familiar, but did.  “You were kicked downstairs and I got the boot upstairs, isn’t that funny?  And Mr Crowley!  I was so sure I’d burned out that little meatsuit of yours.  How’s my good doggy?”

“Your daddy isn’t going to be pleased with you, Lucy,”  Crowley said, his voice low and raspy and controlled.  He had recovered faster than any of them.  Not really a surprise, Bobby thought, as the demon moved in front of him.  “Look what you’ve done to his toys.  Not going to be much fun for you if you break them back to the Stone Age, is it?”

The fallen archangel in the witch suit shrugged her shoulders.  “I’m not planning to stay here, Fergus.  I’m on my way upstairs to plant my butt on a certain throne, and after that I’ve got even more plans.  In a few years time, the monkeys will rebuild a bit, and I’m going to make sure it’s in my gorgeous image.  Oh, and your mother sends her love.”

“You didn’t kill her, then?  I’m disappointed.”

Lucifer laughed, not rising to the bait.  Given the situation, Bobby thought, it was evens whether Rowena was dead and trapped in Hell right now, or alive and obeying Lucifer’s will up here.  Probably not much between those two options.  He had scant moments to make the most of Lucifer’s arrogance to learn what he could of their current situation.  “How about the President?”  he asked randomly. 

“What about him, Robert?”

Bobby gritted his teeth against the response he wanted to make.  “Just wondering if you zapped him and his Congress.  I didn’t vote for the orange-toupeed bastard anyway.”

“Of course you didn’t; you were up in the heavenly realms at the time.  I didn’t _personally_ zap him, Robert, bit busy at the time, but I may have encouraged a little mass insanity around him and let a mob of zombies invade his personal White House space.”  Lucifer laughed merrily.  “Not that you could really pick him out from the rest of the shambling undead even before he got bit.”  He went grim then, jumping from mood to mood as though all of them were fake, put on like fancy hats atop a body that wasn’t his.  “Purgatory and Earth are pretty much the same thing now, Robert Singer, and all you hunters are gonna be pretty busy from now on.  I’m going to give you one last chance to mind your business and not mine.  Don’t look for me.  Don’t look for my son.  Pass this on to those moronic Winchester numbskulls, if you happen to run into them.  Which you probably will, they’re trying to get to you, but they’re having some traffic problems.” 

He glanced aside as though some invisible minion was there speaking to him.  The witch’s eyes flickered red with heat and Bobby recognised the signs of the mortal body beginning to fail around the archangel’s essence.  Her skin was already looking dull and half dead.  “What’s the situation with Castiel?”  he demanded.

“Am I your Google now, Robert?   Come on, you’ve got to do a bit of your own legwork here, you know!”  Lucifer sighed with exaggerated patience.  “The angels took the meatsuit, which hasn’t pleased your boys one bit.  As for where Cassie’s essence ended up, no clue.  I thought I’d ended him, but none of you are very good about being dead when you’re supposed to be.”   He stared at Bobby out of Asha’s failing eyes.  “If you threaten me, Robert Singer, or if I even think you are, your little girl will feel the consequences.”

“I hear you,”  he said, his mouth dry, his mind struggling for calm.  At the basic primate level, he wanted to run from this thing as long and far as he could.

“Oh, I hope you do.  Behave in my new world, Robert.  Stay here, be a good monkey, fuck the ex-King of Hell if you feel like it  - can’t _imagine_ why you feel like it – and do your best to stay alive, won’t you?  It’s so entertaining!”  And Asha’s body fell silently to the sidewalk as the incongruously beautiful, sparkling light floated out of her and dissipated out of the visual spectrum.  Bobby whirled about to see what the bikers were doing and was jolted to his core to find the street empty.  They hadn’t left, there’d been no sound of bikes.  Lucifer had simply caught them up and dropped them somewhere else, maybe back in Charming, maybe in some random location on a highway.  Rafael too.  Only Crowley stood there, fury and dread on his face.  Bobby felt an odd jolt in his chest, looking at him.  Lucifer’s last words were echoing in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously the US President whom Lucifer wore for awhile wasn't the Orange Fool, but I couldn't resist the opportunity. Just imagine him staggering around in the White House amid a herd of shambling, jaw snapping zombies.....
> 
> There's also a smut warning for the next chapter. I wasn't sure if I should do it, but thought it would be ok if I upped the rating a bit. Some advice on what rating this story *should* have would be appreciated.


	10. Hero of the Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some actual smut in this chapter. You wouldn't believe how much time I have spent working on this smut. Things get a bit rough and Bobby is influenced by a spell Lucifer used on him. I thought I'd better warn about that.

Crowley said, “Leave the car,” and reached his hand out to Bobby.

“No, I want the car,”  Bobby said.  “You find out if your powers work if you want to.  I’m gonna see whether Jax and the rest are on the road somewhere or if he just burned them to nothing on a whim.”   He and Crowley stared at each other, both challenging, neither quite certain how determined the other was about this.  For a moment Bobby thought the demon was going to seize his wrist and travel with him, willing or not, to wherever he wanted.  But either Crowley realised it wouldn’t be a good move to compel Bobby, or else he wasn’t any more sure than the hunter that his powers were up to par.  He shrugged negligently and let his arm fall to his side.

“Of course, darling.  I was forgetting your attachment to this particular pile of metal scraps.  You’ll be as bad as Dean with his Baby very soon.”

Bobby regarded him for a long moment before walking to the car.  When he got in, he looked over to the other side and saw Crowley waiting.  “It’s unlocked, idjit,”  he growled at him.  The demon got in and slowly closed the door.  “Thought you were gonna zap off,”  Bobby said.  “It all came back when Lucifer showed up, didn’t it?”

“As far as I can tell,”  Crowley said.  He leaned his head back against the seat rest, suddenly seeming incredibly weary.  Bobby regarded his bearded profile, his stillness, and abruptly reached out his hand to engulf Crowley’s within it.  The demon came to life at that touch, and moved carefully towards him to kiss first the hunter’s cheek, then his lips.  

“I got stuff to tell you,”  Bobby murmured when the kiss was over and he pulled Crowley close against him.  “When I’m sure nothin’ can overhear.”  Crowley’s lips brushed his neck, a sort of wordless agreement, he thought.  Or maybe he thought making out in the car like a couple of horny college kids was a good idea;  you just never knew with his demon.

Approximately halfway through the twenty miles back to Charming, they found the group of irate bikers, each pushing his pride and joy along the highway.  Bobby halted the Mercedes behind them and leaned out of the window, voicelessly curious.  Jax Teller, who was level with the window, turned to look at him, appearing too weary even to swear aloud.  “I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them, we were about two miles _that_ way -”   He pointed with his chin towards the fields on their right.  “Nobody’s bike will start.  Nothing wrong that we can tell, they’re just – it’s like a phone when you can’t get a fucking signal.”

Bobby looked around for Rafael, relieved when he saw the boy, the only person unburdened with a motorcycle, come jogging up to the window.  “Get in,”  he told the kid.  As Rafael was busy doing that, the hunter called to Jax again.  “When did you last test one of the bikes?”

“Ten minutes ago, just before we got back to the road.”

“Try again.”

Jax’s hand went to the throttle before he finished speaking and his Harley coughed and obediently roared to life.  “Holy shit,”  the biker said and in the next moment bikes thundered all around them.  “See you back at the clubhouse,”  Jax said, and within moments the car was alone.  Bobby nodded to himself and restarted the engine.

“How did you know?”  Rafael asked.

“I’ve heard of dead zones before,”  Bobby replied.  “Places where engines, technology, just doesn’t work.  Sometimes the zones themselves only last a little while, sometimes, nothing ever works inside them.  But we didn’t have any trouble with the car, so either the zone was small – just around where the bikes rematerialised – or it was a temporary zone.  Something that wouldn’t cost Lucifer a lot of power to cast.  But Jax and the rest are practical men.  If it didn’t work first couple of times they tried, they wouldn’t keep on doing the same thing.  Not for  a while anyway, and meantimes they’re using a lot of sweat they don’t have to, which Lucifer would probably find funny as all heck.”  Rafael did grin at that and so did Crowley.  “Suggest you keep your merriment to yourselves when we get back,”  Bobby told them.

When they got back to Teller Morrow autoshop around nightfall; they found the Sons – returned travellers and stay behinds - buzzing like a drop-kicked beehive.  Chibs the Scotsman, who had been left in charge, was out in the parking lot talking earnestly with Jax.  About what, Bobby and the others found out quickly when Jax beckoned them over.  “You didn’t happen to see Gemma anywhere on the road before you met us, did you?”

“Your mother?”  Bobby asked slowly, feeling as though his already jarred reality had skipped another beat.  “No, we didn’t.  I think we might have told you.”

“She’s taken off,”  Chibs growled, as though Gemma had done it just to irk him.  “Shit!  I knew she was upset about Clay and worried about that fucking Unser, but I figured she’d at least wait for you to get back.  But it’s Gemma.  What was I thinking?”  He looked to Jax, who nodded, then walked off across the car park, still swearing.  The moment Chibs had cleared the area, Bobby saw he was in for worse trouble.  Kyra had evaded one of the Prospects  - young biker trainees – who tried to stop her coming outside – Bobby’s own recommendation to Jax that he enforce a nighttime curfew of his people, and walked straight up to him.  Crowley, perhaps anticipating some scene, had stayed in the car.

Bobby had expected yelling and maybe tears about being left behind, but Kyra, though she did look upset, wasn’t crying.  She looked at Rafael warningly as though to say “later,” but that was all, then stood by them waiting.  Bobby looked at Jax, wondering whether the biker would try to insist they stay, with this new emergency come up.

“I need to look for her,”  Jax said tiredly.  “I know some places she might go.  You get some rest – you still heading back to your place?”

“I figured so.”

“Yeah, go ahead.  I’ll send somebody by in the morning to check you’re ok, let you know what’s going down.”

Rafael was talking to Kyra, but he turned away almost as soon as Bobby noticed.  “Hey,”  Bobby called to him, “where are you headed?  Have your mom and aunt come back?”

“I don’t know, but I need to head home…”

“Don’t be an idjit; you can’t stay there on your own.”

“My family…”  Rafael said;  his voice shook a little.  “They’re with whatever was….in Asha Wintergreen.  What killed her.”

“Possession,”  Bobby said gently.  He and the boy had both lowered their voices, though none of the bikers was nearby now.  “That was possession.  If you’re a witch, you got to know what that is.”

“I do.  I mean, my mom let me read some of her stuff.  But I never saw it for real.”

Bobby studied the boy, reminding himself that witch or not, this kid was still too young even to watch stupid horror movies like The Exorcist.  His mother and aunt, whatever else they were, had clearly not crossed the line in regard to Rafael.  The hunter was now sure;  the boy was not involved in whatever Lucifer was doing.

“Look, Rafael, what you saw – I’m not gonna go into it in a parking lot.  We need to get inside, it’s not safe outside any more.  It’s not because you’re a kid.  Anybody on their own, witch or not, is gonna be free meat for whatever’s wandering around out there.  Either you stay here or you come back with us.  Whatever your mom and aunt are doing, that’s not on you, and we don’t even know if they chose to do it or not.”

Rafael nodded and followed them back to the car.

*

“Not tonight,”  Bobby said, holding on to his patience.  “Yes, we’re gonna talk about everything but tonight, just eat your dinner and then get some rest.”  Dinner, such as it was – sausages salvaged from the useless and rapidly warming fridge, roasted over the living room fire with baked beans and glasses of juice for the kids to take care of Vitamin C – had been quick to prepare.  Pretty well a campfire meal.  Bobby had set up a couple of battery lamps in the room, asking Crowley not to do magelights or anything magical for a bit.  He was pretty sure that Rafael had to be wondering about Crowley, even if he and the bikers had not heard Lucifer’s taunt to him about “fucking the King of Hell.”  If they _had_ , well, he’d work that out when they got to it, once Gemma Morrow was located.

He had eaten his dinner quickly in the kitchen while getting the kids’ meals, and once he passed them their plates, went to find Crowley in the master bedroom.  Maybe it was the adrenalin rush of encountering Lucifer, or what the witch had said to him, but he felt more fired up than he had in awhile.   Tell the truth at least to himself;  he was horny.  He’d felt that way ever since Lucifer had fired his last taunt, damn him, and wasn’t _that_ a superfluous insult.  With the kids safely occupied for a bit, maybe he didn’t have to wait until they were asleep.  Damn it, he didn’t want to wait.  He entered the room and found the demon at the window, a silent black shadow against the dusk, intent on whatever he was studying outside.

“Hey,”  the hunter greeted him, crossing to join him.  He wrapped his arms around Crowley from behind and pressed his body against him. 

Crowley chuckled softly and pushed back, rubbing his ass against Bobby’s clothed front.  “Hmm, pleased to see me, aren’t you?”  Bobby had already been hard, now the delicious physical contact stiffened him further.   From the days of being uncertain that he really wanted to do this with a guy, well, it was sure what he wanted to do now.  He reached a hand around and stroked down over Crowley’s groin, rewarded by a low sound of pleasure from him.  He rubbed harder and Crowley moaned.

“I don’t want to wait, Crowley,”  Bobby murmured.  “Can you do that lock thing on the door?  Don’t think the kids will come lookin’ for a while yet but you know…”

“Done, love,” Crowley said, his voice raspy with desire as he pushed himself against Bobby’s caressing hand.  Bobby did not want to stop fondling him, his breath coming hard as he felt the throb of Crowley’s cock under his fingers.  But he needed more.  He slid his hands to Crowley’s shoulders to swing him towards the bed and Crowley let himself fall there, still in his suit, parting his legs.  “You’d better help me with these,”  he said, smirking, and Bobby swore softly as he pulled the demon’s shoes off and helped him wriggle out of his trousers and jacket, which seemed to take an annoyingly long time.

“Serve you right if I don’t make it to actually fucking you,”  he muttered and saw the demon’s eyes flash red.  Lust now, instead of fury.  Sometimes it seemed strange to him that Crowley, who was so powerful in the hierachy of Hell, loved to be dominated and taken by him.  But then, being the bottom held its own kind of power, didn’t it?  Crowley grinned at him and stroked over his thrusting erection.  Bobby couldn’t take his gaze from it.  He fumbled with his own clothes and finally disposed of them, crawling on his hands and knees over Crowley on the bed.  Felt the demon reach up and stroke him, adding the cool oiliness of lube to Bobby’s cock.  Figured he’d get _that_ ability back first.

He wasn’t sure when this had ceased to be awkward and became necessary to him, part of the feelings he had for Crowley.  When seeing him sparked lust as well as affection and sometimes it was purely difficult _not_ to reach for him.   He pulled Crowley’s boxers down and lowered his head to the demon’s  exposed groin.  “Ooh, love, that’s just right,”  Crowley purred as Bobby got to work with fingers and tongue.  Crowley continued to natter away amid appreciative noises, pure filthy talk, making Bobby both incredulous and exasperated.  Abruptly there there was a click at the door and then a thump. 

“Um;  have you gone to bed?”  Kyra’s voice asked.  Bobby froze where he was, mentally cursing his assumption that the kids would be able to take care of themselves for more than ten minutes.  Kyra was right outside the door.  He had Crowley’s hard cock in his mouth.  These two facts essentially caused his brain to stop working.  Then he heard Crowley’s voice, as calm as though he was still out of bed and dressed in his full suit and only a little breathless.

“Pretty much, love.  Bobby’s about asleep.”

“We need to set up the couch for Rafael again and I don’t know where Bobby put the bedding.”

Bobby released Crowley’s cock and raised his head from between the other man’s legs to give him a desperate look.  “ _How do you think I feel?”_   Crowley mouthed back at him.  “ _Where’s the fricking blankets?”_

“ _Dumped ‘em back in the linen cupboard_!”  Bobby hissed.

Crowley, rolling his eyes, relayed this information and added.  “And pet?  Stay away for at least another fifteen minutes?”   There was a long silence, during which Bobby wondered (a) had she figured out what was going on?  And (b), if so, was his foster daughter now scarred for life?  There was a cry outside which could have been both a giggle and a shriek of _sorry!_ and the sound of running feet.  Bobby lowered his face to Crowley’s thigh and groaned deeply.  Crowley propped himself up on an elbow so he could grin down at Bobby.  “Do I need to say…”

“Parenthood was my idea.  _I know, idjit_.”

Romance was postponed as both hunter and demon completely lost it and dissolved into helpless, cathartic laughter.  Bobby’s laugh ended in a cough, his eyes watering as he tried to compose himself.  He felt overheated of a sudden and not, as Crowley might tease, in a good way;  more like a sudden fever.  What had been a pleasurable ache in his groin intensified.  He was aware of an urgency that was almost anger, a determination to do this, get what he needed _right now_ , no matter what the man beneath him was ready for or wanted.  Normally he’d have used a rubber, never mind Crowley sayin’ it didn’t matter, but now he didn’t care about that either.

He raised himself up on hands and knees, gripping Crowley hard, but the demon only laughed as he felt the painful holds, his eyes flaring with equal lust.  Bobby didn’t, couldn’t speak.  Urgent with need, with _compulsion_ , he shoved Crowley into position on his back, so that he could press himself against his rear and push hard into him.   Crowley cried out and pushed against him, clenching around Bobby’s cock.  Again and again Bobby thrust, harder and more roughly than he had ever done, while the King of Hell lay upon his back, stocky legs obediently raised and spread, moaning in ecstasy as Bobby Singer fucked him.

Bobby lost himself in orgasm, gasping for breath, aware only vaguely that Crowley was laughing, urging him on.  Did Crowley come also?  He didn’t know, collapsing over Crowley in the aftermath, a roaring in his ears and an exhaustion running through him that was worse than anything he’d experienced before.  He wanted to keep going, at least his mind did, but there was nothing physical left.  He pushed against Crowley ineffectually, tried to say something, but felt sleep take him.  

“Well,”  murmured the King of Hell from beneath the sleeping hunter, “that was interesting.”

*

After Bobby had fallen asleep in the mess they’d made, Crowley got quietly out of the bed and dressed.  For a moment he stood looking at Bobby, who lay on his side, the sheet and blankets over his lower half a tangled mess.   At that moment Crowley’s face had a very human look of affection, which faded when he turned, emitting a short sigh as he turned his mind to what he had to deal with.  Now he was the King of Hell, whatever the fuck Lucifer or anyone else thought, and he needed to know what was going on.  Briefly he considered leaving a note, then abandoned the idea:  Bobby would understand what his absence meant and there was no one else, beyond Kyra to some degree, who mattered.

He vanished from the bedroom.

*

Crowley had no idea where he really wanted to go for this conversation.  He simply held the thought of _isolated_ and _treeless_ in his mind, and blinked into a desert.  Night was chill around him;  sandy ground under his feet.  Not far away, there was rock twisted and shaped by ancient earthquakes, rising to the sky.  Crowley didn’t bother to identify the place further;  he just walked the canyon, assembling the words and intent of the spell in his mind.   His ass was sore, he noted, the aching going right inside him, but so delicious.  He wanted to forget the current plan, go back and do it all again.  He doubted Bobby would be up – excuse him – for that idea.  Something about Bobby’s behaviour had been rather….different, that was certain.

Maybe two minutes walk later, he paused and spoke the gravelly Enochian words.  The effect of them spread like a sudden storm on the air, increasing the air pressure into eddies of wind around him.  There was no response beyond that and Crowley shrugged.  So the attention-getter had not worked.  It had been a long shot.  He had found that spell in one of the Men of Letters’ books and there was no information to tell him whether it had ever actually worked.

“You never did bother to look at me when you were in the boys’ bunker, you know,”  he said, conversational, relaxed.  He studied the night sky’s familiar constellations and nodded to himself;  probably the Mojave.  Or somewhere in New Mexico.  Or Iraq.   It could have been the moon for all he cared.  “All that apocalypse nonsense going on;  making up with Number One Son, thinking he was actually going to fall in line again, and there’s Crowley in the background with his glass of the good stuff, providing the comic relief.  I’m probably the only one not surprised that you took off with your lovely sister – and you do know that behaviour used to get you sent to _my_ bailiwick, don’t you?  Tch, tch.  So this isn’t praying to you;  don’t you ever think it.  It’s telling you that you might be advised to get in touch, sunshine, before Number One Son destroys your precious creation for good and all.”

“You’re mistaken there.”

Crowley jumped, swore and was instantly annoyed at himself.  He turned very slowly and studied the insignificant looking meatsuit which stood there.  No, not meatsuit, was it – _avatar_ – always the posh term when it was God.  He couldn’t sense anything of Amara, which was not to say she wasn’t around listening.  “Chuck,”  he greeted, using heavy sarcasm as a sauce for his nervousness.  “You do know everything’s gone to shit lately, don’t you?”

“Not everything,”  Chuck said.  “You’re alive.  You weren’t supposed to be.”

“Oh, thank you so much for that.  Do I have you to thank for the fact that I was as powerless as one of your monkeys until very recently?  Or did Lucifer zap me as I skedaddled?”

“Robert Singer,”  Chuck said, as though he couldn’t believe it himself.  “He gave his own energy to your spell.”

“He was the link,’  Crowley said, sounding as bored as he could.

Chuck smiled.  “He loves you.”

“So am I still properly a demon?”  Crowley demanded, shying away from that in true river in Egypt style.   He confronted Chuck, pleased to remember that God’s meatsuit was even shorter than his own.  Did He choose it for the same sort of reasons as Crowley had his own?  The demon studied him carefully, not at all fooled by the dorky surface mannerisms, the holdover-hippie appearance.  Something unbelievably ancient and cold lived behind those mortal eyes, something that rose from the depths for the briefest moment as the avatar met the King’s eyes.  Crowley smiled, knowing that red hellflame leaped in his eyes, his own sign that he was something other than mere human; a monstrous thing warped and tortured from the shreds of a human soul.

 “I couldn’t use my damn powers,”  Crowley continued, not looking away from the Power before him.  “I couldn’t draw on Hell.  Now I can use some powers, I can travel, but I still can’t bloody well draw on Hell, so you know what that means if I want to keep doing it.  The place needs a ruler that will keep it in line.  That’s not Lucifer, O Deity, he’s busy running around up top creating havoc.  He broke Purgatory open and now its creatures are also running around up top.  And you’re not doing a fucking thing to stop it!”

“I’m talking to you,”  Chuck pointed out.

“Because I fricking well called you.  I picked up the phone, Charlie Boy.”

“And why do you care, King of Hell?”

“Who said I _care_?  And am I King of Hell?  Hell requires a demon to rule it, that’s in the founding charter, isn’t it?”

“You used a witch spell that’s designed to be used by a human, because witches are basically humans with a talent for magic,”  Chuck told him.  “It messed you up, left you as neither one thing nor the other.  Nothing to do with me or my son.  But I can now tweak it for you, if you like, return you to being fully demon or fully human.  You get a second go as human, if that’s what you want. “  He considered the creature standing before him and shook his head.  “Technically, demons _are_ humans, you know.  Made over, twisted, created from physical suffering and mental anguish, but there’s no new material, you might say,  from when you were mortal.  Still, that spell wasn’t made with your differences in mind.”

“I hardly remember being human,”  Crowley snarled.  “Sixty-odd miserable years of mortality against centuries of shining demonic power.  Well, except for those times when I was on the rack or when Abaddon was in charge or when Lucifer put me in a dog kennel;  times like that.  Why would I choose to shackle myself to a mortal near-corpse again.”

“Why indeed?”

“And you haven’t answered my question, sunshine.  Why haven’t you sorted Lucifer out and stopped him messing up this place?”

“I can’t.”

That simple answer stopped Crowley’s next rant before he even got it started.  He studied Chuck, and saw that if he was lying, he didn’t know it.  “What – the – fuck?”  the demon inquired politely.

“It’s in the contract I made with him when he was first Fallen,”  Chuck explained.  “He would rule Hell forever – or one of his descendants – and he was to have full command and control of all the souls which were sorted and passed on to him at death.  That means he needed to have jurisdiction.  One of Lucifer’s first titles was the Lord of this World.”

“You saying he _owns_ the Earth plane?  Even though he’s been imprisoned in the Cage for practically forever?”

Chuck shrugged.  “You can be in prison and still own property, so long as it’s not the proceeds of crime.  Don’t you own the Moon?   You should read some of those old scrolls sometime, Crowley, even if they don’t immediately pertain to your ambitions.  They’ve got some useful stuff in them.”  Crowley expressed his opinion of said scrolls and Chuck made a disapproving sound.  “Don’t blaspheme, please, Crowley, it’s rude when the person is standing in front of you.  Anyway, my point is simply that I can’t act, it’s against one of the earliest agreements that I made.  Nothing stops you from acting, or the Winchesters, or anyone else.  Mortal instruments have always been a useful loophole.  Up until now, demonic instruments have never been in the mix, because demon.  People interested in helping others don’t end up in your bailiwick, as you put it.”

“I’m _not_ interested in helping _others,_ ”  Crowley spat.  “Only in helping Bobby.”  He paused and added slowly, “And Kyra.  Maybe Dean.  Or Cas.  If I’m feeling generous.  By the way, what’s going on with Cas?  I assume it’s your angels who took his vessel.  Where’s the boy himself?”

“Purgatory, to start with,”  Chuck said.  “Then Lucifer decided to open that door and Cas was sort of swept away among the ghosts.  They created ghost storms in New York, can you believe?”  He chuckled.  “Ghostbusters for real.  Not funny?  You do need to get out more, King of Hell.”

“I get out just fine.  Where’s Castiel now?”

“Still in New York, possibly, but the ghost storms are spreading around the world, so I don’t really know.  Tell Dean he needs to hold a séance, call Cas’ spirit back to his vessel.”

“That would work fine if he had Castiel’s body.”  Crowley considered.  “Hm, I’m not sure that came out quite right.”

Chuck thought it over and shrugged.  “Anyway, that’s not a problem.  I’m their boss, I’ll get you the body.  You get together with the Winchesters, hold the séance and I promise you, he’ll be back good as new.”

“Hold on, _I_ don’t want the damn body…”

In the next second, a heavy weight pushed him to the ground and Crowley swore, shoving at the man in a trenchcoat who was lying across him, apparently unconscious.  He got out from under at last, scrabbling in the sand, only to find that he was now alone.  Chuck’s voice drifted to him from nowhere:  “You’re my instrument, King of Hell, and that’s your deal.  You join with my warriors to overcome Lucifer and you will have your choice.  Return to being a full demon and Hell’s monarch, or your second chance at humanity.”

*

“I think Lucifer did something to me,”  Bobby said.  He sprawled naked in bed, looking utterly done in, like a man who has just battled a mob of demons with his bare hands, Crowley thought, instead of just fucked one demon’s brains most pleasurably out the night before.  He’d certainly still been dead to the world when Crowley sneaked back into bed and it was now just after sunrise.

“Mm,”  he murmured, lying back with hands behind his head, half listening, half hoping there’d be a morning round.  Usually Robert would just growl at him that he wasn’t a damn teenager, but last night _had_ been quite exceptional, so you never knew.  “Very possible, love;  it’s his standard procedure to mess with people, demons, anybody.”

“When he said that shit about bein’ a good monkey and fucking you…”

“Not _quite_ those words, darling.”

“I couldn’t think of anythin’ else,”  Bobby persisted.  “You know we – I mean, it’s good now between us;  I want you…but last night it was like I was on some kinda rape drug.  I felt weird, sort of feverish, like it didn’t matter if you wanted it or not.”  He was visibly distressed now.

“Come here,”  Crowley interrupted, businesslike.  He rested a hand on Bobby’s face and closed his eyes for a moment to focus his powers.  What should have been simple felt like wrenching a jammed faucet to produce a tiny trickle of water, but he got a distinct sniff of a fading, malevolent spell.  “Hm, yes, you may be right.  I didn’t think to check because I was having such a good time, love.  Listen to me.”  He left the hand where it was, focused his gaze on Bobby’s worried blue eyes.  “There may have been a tiny Viagra-strength spell aimed at you.  But remember I’m a demon.  You can’t hurt me that way, even if that was Lucifer’s intent, and even if I cared about hurt!   It wasn’t even a big thing to him, it was just a little, vicious sting in the tail to send you away with.  He’s the progenitor of all demons, and he’s very, very good at it.”

“You’re tryin’ to make me feel better,”  Bobby accused, but he had to try hard not to grin.  Crowley liked to joke and taunt, but he was less happy about being the subject, especially when he was in full “king” mode as the hunter thought of it.  He patted Crowley’s chest.  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.”

“On that point, love, I have something I need to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“I know where Castiel’s vessel is.”

“You do?  When did you have a chance to find out?”

“Last night after you went to sleep.  Don’t you want to know where it is?”

“Where, then?”

“In the trunk of your Mercedes.”


	11. Not Wonderful, Not Armageddon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to all those who find the Xmas/New Year season a bit hard to take. Bring on the apocalypse!

The Winchesters were late.   Sure, it was only the next day after Sam told him they would be there, but Bobby had gotten used to the boys being pretty well unstoppable and also fairly reliable on their predictions regarding travel time.  He was starting to feel a niggle of concern.

Not long after they’d gotten up, shortly after  Crowley dropped the clanger of Cas’ return, sort of,  Bobby, muttering and swearing steadily, had walked out to the car, popped the trunk open and stared, abruptly silent, at the familiar figure untidily tucked into it.  With Crowley’s help, he’d moved Castiel into the spare bedroom/junk room minutes before Kyra came out of her room.  The angel looked like he was asleep after a bender; kind of scruffy, his tie half undone, trenchcoat dirty and possibly bloodstained.  Bobby wasn’t much reassured by Crowley saying the vessel was “incorruptible,” i.e. wasn’t going to decay, it would be fine lying on the bed until they got the angel’s “essence” back into it.  If anyone else saw the angel vessel, Bobby had no idea what explanation he could give.

“Don’t mention Cas to the kids,”  he told Crowley.

“Why ever not?”

“Just hold off, okay?  Let’s keep the weird stuff at least until Sam and Dean get here.”

“Oh, by all means.”

“Are you rollin’ your eyes behind my back?”

Crowley chuckled; so unfamiliar a sound that Bobby turned rather quickly to stare at him.  He was in his suit, but not exactly fully formal.  His shirt had the top button undone and he wasn’t wearing the tie at all.  His usually tidy dark hair was rumpled and his beard needed a trim.  Bobby realised with a jolt that he was finding this relaxed version of Crowley incredibly hot.  The demon raised his eyebrows at the scrutiny and glanced down at himself.  “Did I forget something, love?”

“No, you just, uh, you look good.”

“I’m a mess,”  Crowley said disparagingly, fastidiously brushing at his coat.  “Makes me miss the countless minions I had around me in Hell to take care of my personal grooming.”  He glanced back at Bobby curiously, but the hunter only shook his head, wishing for once he had Crowley’s gift of the gab.  He went on into the kitchen, where he’d set the kids to dumping the spoiled food that had been in the fridge and took inventory of the dry goods.  Not much;  he’d lost the habit of keeping several weeks’ supply, and what was here wouldn’t last more than couple of days with four of them eating.  If the town itself wasn’t resupplied soon, they were facing a serious problem.  Bobby grimaced at the smell of spoiled meat.

“Dump that outside,”  he told Kyra.  “I’ll need to dig a proper pit for it soon.  Rafael, we might need to take a trip to your folks’ place – do you know what sort of food supplies you had?”

“Uh, some tinned stuff…”

“I need a bit more detail than that.  Crowley, you got your travel knack back, haven’t you?  Could you…”

“Bit of a problem there, Robert,”  Crowley murmured and wandered off, leading Bobby out of earshot again.  He sighed and faced the demon.

“What problem?”

“I’m still not linked to Hell,”  Crowley said.  “Demons draw their energy for magic from Hell, from the souls they managed to acquire.  As the King, I get to draw on the whole damned lot.”  He grinned but only briefly.  “When a demon is, ah, out of touch, they’ve got to feed the power more directly.”  Bobby frowned as he tried to follow Crowley’s path of thought.  “Blood sacrifice?”  Crowley sighed.  “How soon they forget.  You want me to pick one of the good folks of Charming to be my charger?”

“Oh,” said Bobby.  “Forgot.”

“Anyway, if you were about to ask me to skip us over to Rafael’s house, shame on you, darling.  I went out there on foot before I got my ability back, and if _I_ can walk it, you can certainly....”

“And you bitched about it forever.  No, we can drive – in the hopes we find supplies - but I was wantin’ to conserve the gas as much as we can.  No idea when that’ll be resupplied either.”

Crowley shrugged as though he didn’t care either way.  “Well, if you find out one of the good folks is not so good, let me have them and we can kill two birds, Robert.  Otherwise I’ll look out for a monster to knock on the head;  there’s sure to be one of those at some point.”

“I better check in with Jax first.  I didn’t think of it first up, but it could get edgy if the bikers are here when the boys arrive and….”

“Dean opens his mouth?”

Bobby was about to growl something at him, then considered again and shrugged.  “Pretty much, yeah,”  he said.  “I’m gonna need Rafael to come along…”

“Kyra won’t let you leave her behind again,”  Crowley told him.  “Why don’t we make it a family trip?”

Bobby stared at him and managed to close his mouth.  Then he held his arms out to Crowley, who advanced with slight wariness, but let Bobby close the embrace around him.  “Sometimes you just get it right,”  he told him.  “No idea how.”  The King made a put-upon sigh, but he leaned into Bobby contentedly.  The hunter nuzzled his beard and kissed him briefly.  “Later,”  he reminded Crowley when the other man would have kept on with it.

“Promises, promises,” muttered the demon.

*

Rafael looked worried, when Bobby told him what the plan was, but he nodded.  Kyra trudged back in.  To Bobby’s unpractised gaze she seemed less energetic than usual, though that wasn’t that much of a surprise.  “You okay?”  he asked her.

“I don’t feel too good,”  Kyra said.  “But I’m still coming,” she added hastily before he could suggest she stay behind.  She was probably better of with them anyway, Bobby thought.

“Well, tell me if you’re gonna throw up,”  he said.

“Do it out of the other window,”  Rafael advised.

Bobby headed out to the car before they could see him grinning. 

Rafael’s home was a California bungalow not unlike Bobby’s own rented place, but with a much better and well tended garden, though it showed the devastation of unseasonal snow and storms now.  The front door and windows looked secure, the hunter thought, but he made everyone wait while he moved around the house, examining the exterior for any sign of intruders.  It would have been child’s play for Crowley to ‘persuade the lock’ so he didn’t even bother asking him how he’d gotten in earlier.

“I think it’s okay,”  Bobby said to the kid. 

“I’ll go in first,”  Rafael said.  Bobby expected him to retrieve a key from somewhere, but he went to the door and put his hand on the doorknob, murmuring words of a cantrip.  The door opened silently inwards. 

Bobby followed, then Crowley and finally Kyra.  They stood in the mustiness of a hallway not aired in quite awhile.  Rafael listened and then said “Mom?  Aunt Nita?” but not as though he expected an answer.  Then he went on, with the others trailing him, checking all the rooms of the house – looking into the three bedrooms, kitchen and living room and an ordinary-looking study crammed with books.  “Don’t you have a computer?”  Kyra asked Rafael.

“They don’t do too well with magic,”  he explained, while Kyra gazed at him as though wondering how he could survive such deprivation.

“I got a computer,”  Bobby said.

“The kind of spells hunters do, they don’t, um….”

“I get it, kid,”  Bobby sighed.  “Your family do heavy duty, electronics-wrecking stuff.  So where do they do that stuff, hmm?  There’s nothing here that says practising witch to me.”

“Basement,”  Crowley said, as though it was obvious.  Bobby had not seen any entrance that could have led to a basement and mentally chalked one up to the Catalano clan’s wiliness.  Rafael faced both of them, not looking as though he meant to lead them straight to the hidden room.  “Come on, you knew we would ask,”  Crowley continued.  “You saw what took over Asha Winter-whatever and that shook you up, didn’t it?  You asked if that was what had your mum and auntie…”

“I didn’t _ask_.  I know,”  Rafael said shakily.  “But this is their place.  It’s not going to show you any clues…”

“How do you know?”  Bobby asked.  “You been down there since all this started?”  The boy shook his head.  “So you go in.  I’ll take a quick look from the doorway and if I can’t see anythin’ I need to follow up, like an open book or whatever, I’ll wait for you.  But we’re your protection right now, Rafael, and you don’t get that for nothing.”  He was aware that Kyra was staring at him in dismay, but he ignored her, meeting Rafael’s gaze, man to man style. 

“Only you, Mr Singer,”  Rafael said with what dignity he could.  “I don’t want to be rude, but I’m not showing _you_ our temple.”  He looked at Crowley, who grinned back.  “Mr Crowley, you are – well, I don’t know – but you’re something not human.  If I was initiated and being trained, I’d know, but I still sense something.”

“Good,”  Crowley approved.  “You’d make a damn useless witch if you couldn’t.”  He sighed theatrically.  “Very well.  What if I go in the kitchen and start sorting out what food’s still all right to be salvaged?  That far enough away?”

Rafael had clearly challenged as far as he dared.  He nodded, and they divided up.  Once Crowley was out of sight, Rafael went to a door they’d already established led to a bathroom.  He went in and stopped in the middle of the floor.  Bobby waited in the doorway, Kyra behind him, peeking under his arm.  Rafael looked very small of a sudden, wearing a yellow t-shirt belonging to Kyra with his jeans and sneakers.  _Remember to tell the kid to pack some stuff,_   Bobby thought.

Rafael said a few words in a language he didn’t know, wasn’t even sure whether or not it was a human language.  He tried to fix the words in his memory but they slipped away, just as the details of Heaven and Hell had done.  The air in the room blurred and then restored itself, all as it had been before, except now there was a doorway where there had been a floor-length narrow mirror.  Rafael was shaking.  Giving away such a secret was not without its cost, the hunter knew.  While not actually a geas, the boy would have been told since babyhood that the family’s secrets must be kept.

“There’s stairs,”  Rafael said to Bobby.  “Very narrow, you have to walk behind me.”

“Wait here,”  Bobby told Kyra with extra firmness in his tone.  “I mean it.”

With no working lights, the stairway down was in almost total darkness.  Bobby took his flashlight from his pocket, clicked it on and aimed it at their feet with the precision of frequent practice.  At the bottom was another door and this Rafael opened as he had the front door.  A blast of blueish light nearly blinded Bobby in the next moment and he heard a woman’s voice speaking in that unknown language, soft and urgent.  Hand over his eyes, he heard it say Rafael’s name and he raised his hand, eyes watering as he struggled to see.

The image resembled a ghost, faded and colours washed out, but Bobby could see that it was a dark-haired Hispanic woman in her early thirties, dressed in a wool coat and trousers.  She seemed fidgety and upset, close to crying, but holding on to her control.  The language had the cadence of Spanish, to Bobby’s ears, but he was surprised not to be able to make out any of it.  He had a gift for languages and did his best to stay fluent in those he knew.  The woman gabbled quickly, but her final words were cut off as she flickered and vanished.  So did the bright blue light.

“Was that your mom?”  Bobby asked sternly.

“Yes.  That – it’s just a recording, saying goodbye…”

“She took a while to say goodbye,”  Bobby commented.  “What was the rest of it?”

Rafael looked uneasy but under Bobby’s stare he recited reluctantly.

 “ “ _Rafael, you must leave the house.  Go to the hunter;  he will protect you.  There is a geas on Juanita and I – it is_ his _geas.  Nita is already gone and I have to catch up with her.  Please don’t follow, you’re not ready…”_ And she was cut off or did not finish.”

“What ain’t you ready for?”

“I’m not initiated,”  Rafael confessed.  “I’ve begun studying but well, I don’t know that much.”

“And “his geas?”.  That’s Lucifer?”

Again an unhappy nod.  Bobby raised the flashlight – his night vision wrecked by the blue light - to examine the room, seeing the expected bookshelves, a heavy workdesk suitable for preparing ingredients or writing, candles in metal sticks and so on.  Everything seemed reasonably ordered, not at all left in haste, so he surmised the witches hadn’t been in the middle of any working when the geas struck.  A spell that had been strong enough to compel two adult, trained witches.  If the story he was piecing together was in fact accurate, strong enough to compel many of them.  It _had_ to be Lucifer.  “C’mon, let’s go,”  he said.

When they reached the top of the stairs and Bobby started to push the door open, he heard a “Don’t come in!” from Kyra and obediently froze the motion.  When he heard “It’s okay now,” he continued, seeing her at the sink splashing water on her face.

“Your water’s running ok,”  Bobby said.

“We’ve got a tank,”  Rafael told him.

 _And your pipes didn’t freeze when winter passed through overnight on the Devil’s wings?.  I should take up witchcraft._ “I heard somebody talking,”  Kyra said.  “Not you guys, I mean.”

“My mother left me a message,”  Rafael said.  He spoke quietly, seeming for that moment to be much older than thirteen.  Kyra watched him, as though Bobby were not even in the rather crowded bathroom.  “I’ve got to find her.  She and Aunt Nita are in really bad trouble.”

“Yeah,”  Bobby murmured, “I think you might be right about that.”

They emerged from the bathroom to find Crowley standing there,  a laden cardboard box in his arms.  “Your mother and aunt are quite the hoarders,”  he greeted Rafael, before realising what room they had emerged from.  His brows rose theatrically.  “Do I really want to know?”

Rafael didn’t seem to care any more that the location of the temple entrance was pretty well common knowledge among them now.  He pushed past Crowley, Kyra in his wake, leaving the demon and the hunter to look at one another.  “Anything?” Crowley asked.

“His mother left a – you might know what to call it – kind of a Princess Leia recording thing.  Said there was a geas on her and her sister, they had to go.  Told the kid not to follow.  So he said.  It seemed like a lot for just that, but I gotta take his word for it.  I got no idea what the language was, couldn’t even recognise it, let alone pick out any words except for his name.  Not Enochian.”

“Wouldn’t expect it, love.  It could have been a witch language peculiar to Rafael’s clan.”

“A language just known within one family?”

“Very extended family, I would think, but yes.  Makes it easier to keep spells and secrets confidential from pesky demons and hunters.  Do you want to retrieve some of their books?”

“Not now.  We know where they are if we need to, but next plan – after we talk to Jax – is to enlist Sam and Dean in this stupid séance to get Cas back to his body.”

*

“I’m sorry about, you know,”  Kyra said, as she and Rafael leaned against the Mercedes.  They used the excuse of needing to look out for trouble to avoid looking at one another.

“Yeah.  But they couldn’t help it.”

“You think it was true about the geas?”

“Do you know what a geas is?”  Rafael’s voice was usually pretty calm, but he sounded outraged now as he turned to her.

“A spell that made them do something?”

“Yeah, but it – it gets hold of your head, it takes away your entire…..you.  Kyra, I like you but you’ve got no idea – and you don’t know my family, they wouldn’t just…”

“You know that thing that took over the witch, Asha, that burned out her eyes?”  Kyra’s voice shook but she stared back steadily.  “A few months ago, it took over _my_ mom and….and when she was – was gone, it took over _me_.  So maybe I don’t know all about your stupid witch spells but I know about that thing.  It’s called _Lucifer_   - you know _that_ name?   That’s the thing your family were – are into, that’s how he could throw a spell over all of them!”   She was shaking now and Rafael stared at her in stunned horror.  “I like you, but you are so stupid I could scream!”

*

Crowley and Bobby halted at the front door, Bobby running into Crowley and grabbing his shoulders to steady himself.  The kids’ voices were loud and clear and furious.  “What the hell?”  Bobby muttered.

“Just a little adolescent mating ritual?”  Crowley suggested.

“Crowley!”

“Wait.”

*

“They don’t serve the Devil,”  Rafael was on the verge of tears himself, his amber eyes glistening as he looked at Kyra.  “They _don’t._   That’s an old, old story in the books, how Lucifer was the brightest angel and he left Heaven because he wouldn’t serve…”

“He _fell_!”

“And he gave my ancestors magic powers and they wrote down the spells and taught them to their kids and their kids married among the witch families and passed on the spells to the next generations.   So when you’re initiated, you thank Lucifer for what he gave you and you promise to serve him – but that’s words from, like,   _thousands_ of years ago.”  Conflicted, unable to clearly explain what he felt, Rafael gave a helpless shrug.  “I never thought he was really real.  I don’t know if my mom and aunt thought he was real.  But the Lucifer in the old books – he wasn’t a thing that took over people’s bodies and burned out their eyes.  I’m _sorry_ , Kyra.  I didn’t know about your mom and you – I guess I didn’t know about Lucifer either.”

Kyra sniffed and drew in a breath.  For a moment neither said anything and then she said in a small voice, “You said you like me?”

“I do.”

“I kinda like you too.”

He managed a brief grin.  “Only kinda?”

“Maybe.”

*

“Move,”  Bobby told Crowley and gave him a slight push.  The kids, who were standing and staring into each other’s eyes, jumped noticeably and turned to face them as the hunter and demon got closer.

“It’s not a good idea to yell a certain name repeatedly out loud,”  Bobby told them.  Both looked chagrined.  “With luck he’s far away and busy with other matters, but still, keep it in mind.”

“Hold this,”  Crowley said, pushing the full box into Rafael’s arms. 

“Get in the car,”  Bobby sighed.  “We need to check in with a gang of outlaw bikers.”

He noted that Kyra was still looking withdrawn and unwell and he didn’t think it was just the almost-quarrel with Rafael.  When they reached Teller Morrow and were walking towards the clubhouse, he motioned her to his side.  “You want to have a chat with that doctor, see if she can help you feel better ?”

“Okay,”  Kyra said.

Bobby put an arm around her, hugging her awkwardly against him.  “You’ll be okay, kid.  You got us with you.”

Jax was approaching him and he quickly switched from one problem to another, turning his attention to the biker as Kyra headed off in search of the club’s doctor.  “Was going to come look for you,”  the blond biker greeted.  “Some of the guys were on a sweep of the town and they saw a car making its way in.  Black Impala, two guys in it.  You know anything about that?”

“Some reason I would?”  Bobby countered, responding to the challenge in Jax’s voice, at the same time as he felt an intense relief.

“Only that they said they were coming to find you.”

“Oh.  That.  What did your guys do?”

“I don’t know.  They called in via radio and I could hear yelling and then we lost the connection.  Can you head out there with me and some reinforcements?”

It clearly wasn’t a request.  Bobby sighed and abandoned thoughts of a beer and a bit of a break.  “Sure, but I’m getting low on gas…”

“Leave the car here.  You don’t mind riding bitch with Tig?”

In the end it was Crowley who rode with Tig.  Bobby, with much wary muttering, settled behind Bobby Munson, whose bike, he said with good humour, had more room for a wide load and was used to it besides.  “Just ease up on the death grip, Singer,”  Munson advised as they started out.  “I’m gonna need to breathe now and then and you haven’t even bought me dinner first.”

“Funny,”  Bobby growled, but quietly.  He rather liked Munson, who struck him as one of the smartest of the Sons, though as prone to casual violence as any of them.  He couldn’t see much from behind the biker, but was glad of the windbreak; one of the many reasons motorcycles were not among his favourite means of transportation.  Only when the roar of the engines faded and their speed slowed to a halt did he spot the black Impala parked diagonally across the road, surrounded by bikes and men in SOA kuttes.  Among them stood two familiar plaid-shirted figures; the giant shaggy one and the smaller, still tall guy in any other company, gesturing cheerfully as he talked to the bikers.

Bobby slid stiffly off the bike, muttering as he saw Munson’s grin.  “I’d tell you it gets easier but it fucking doesn’t,”  the other Bobby told him.  “Still, you let me know if you need another ride.”

“Thanks but I’m gonna beg a lift from my friends,”  Bobby said.  He saw Crowley climbing off Tig’s bike, looking every bit as uncomfortable as he felt.  Several things then happened very close together.  Sam saw him and called out a greeting.  Dean spun around to look.  Crowley reached Bobby, saying clearly, “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to close my legs properly again;  that all right with you, love?”  Bobby groaned in dismay as he waved back to Sam and saw Sam’s jaw tighten as he recognised Crowley.  Probably just hearing him had been enough.

Dean reached for his gun and Bobby saw the gesture mirrored by several bikers.  Jax stepped between Bobby and Dean, yelling for everyone to stand down.  Crowley stepped closer to Bobby, looking grim as though he expected the hunter to shove him off, now that the Winchesters were here.  “Still no gratitude,”  the erstwhile King of Hell murmured.  Bobby felt a sudden swell of affection for him and thought damn it all, and reached an arm around Crowley’s shoulders.

“C’mon, let’s go say hi,”  he murmured, feeling the tense muscle under his arm.  He hugged Crowley.   “I’d tell you to relax but you’d be stupid to do it.  Just remember I got your back.”

“And my ass.”

“Just shut up about your ass.”

Now here he was in the middle of a windswept road in California, with a ring of outlaw bikers around them and the King of Hell at his side.  Bobby didn’t have to see Crowley’s face to know he wore a slight smirk as he looked back at Sam and Dean.  “So you didn’t sacrifice yourself for us after all,”  Sam said.  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Wasn’t ever for you, Jolly Green,”  Crowley said.  “You got Lucifer over to the…..other location, which was helpful.  Then I figured you’d be distraction enough for me to close the gate.  Now, _that’s_ incentive enough for me to take the risk.  Even with the way things went down, it was a partial success, you know.  The gate closed.”

“What freaking risk did you take?”  Dean growled, but it wasn’t really hostile.  He had always been closer to Crowley, Bobby knew, little though he’d admit it.  Had Sam become the demon, Bobby didn’t think there would have been any country bars or karaoke or whatever other shit Dean and Crowley had got up to.  He’d never managed to get much detail out of Crowley and less out of Dean.

“He got the spell out of one of your Men of Letters books,”  Bobby said, cutting Crowley off from more snark.  “With no real idea of how effective it was or if it’d even work with him stuck in another damned universe.”

“Without you here, it wouldn’t have,”  Crowley said, turning his head towards Bobby.  Sam muttered, a sound of disgust that fired Bobby’s blood up to anger.

“Watch that,”  he warned.

Sam shrugged a little, looking embarrassed and intensely weary.  Just looking at them, Bobby could see signs of a hard journey and wondered exactly how bad things were in the world beyond this town.  They’d been bad enough right here and were getting worse rather than better.  He couldn’t call them boys any more, that was for sure, even Sam.

“Where’s Kyra?”  Dean asked.  “She still with you?”

“Yeah.  She’s back at my friends’ base while we have a talk.”

“Well, c’mon,”  Dean waved a hand, keeping a careful eye on the weapons’ the Sons held.  “Everything’s gone to shit; we know that.  We got a good look at what’s happened to the country on our way to you.”  He glanced at his brother, then around at the bikers for a moment, clearly not sure whether they’d understood what he was saying or would put it down to crazy talk.  Tig was clearly fascinated but the rest of them were muttering to one another.  Bobby spotted the moment where Dean decided to go for broke.  “You make it fucking hard to thank you, you know that?”  he demanded, taking a step forward to get in Crowley’s face.  “Yeah, you closed the fucking gate or whatever the hell it was, and if we’d been one moment faster we could have trapped Lucifer on that side and Cas would be okay too.  So thank you . . . and damn you, Crowley!”

“You’re welcome, darling.”  Crowley smirked back at him.  “If that gate had stayed open, both our “realities” would have become unstable, you know;  they’d have had a swordfight over which of them got shoved down which asshole.”

“That is totally gross, you know,”  Dean said, with a flicker of admiration, while most of the bikers tried to figure out what Crowley had just said and if he was talking about porn.  Sam shoved his brother in the ribs.

“That’s what I said,”  he told Bobby, reluctance in every motion.  “Without the, uh, imagery.  If Crowley hadn’t done what he did, it would have been the end of our world as we know it.  Not that what’s going on now is exactly wonderful, but it’s not Armageddon.  Not yet.”

He met Crowley’s eyes for a moment, steadfast and determined to the last to do what was right, even if he choked on it.  Crowley’s smirk faded and he nodded, once;  the king accepting due fealty, even though he knew the Moose did not mean it like that.

“You gonna introduce these guys?”  Jax asked, breaking the moment.  Just as well, Crowley thought, or else he and Sam were going to be standing here in the centre of this dusty highway until nightfall because neither of them wanted to back down by looking away first.

“Sam and Dean Winchester, hunters,”  Bobby said simply.  “Their father and I taught ‘em but now they’re as good as we ever were.  And they’re just passing through, in case you were wondering.”  _In the hopes of avoiding some kind of alpha showdown!_   “They’re here to help me and Crowley try to deal with the asshole who created this whole mess.”

“Satan,”  Jax said, still like he couldn’t believe he was saying it.

“Yeah.  Sam, Dean, this is Jax Teller, boss of the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle gang – pardon me – club.”  Bobby waved a hand in a circle to indicate the rest of the bikers.  “Currently the only law in Charming, California.”  The Sons liked that idea;  there was a deep chuckling response around the group.  “Jax, I’d like to take Sam and Dean back to my place for a bit of a rest and a clean up.  We got some things to talk about.”

“Bring ‘em by the clubhouse this evening,”  Jax told him.  “We’ll have a barbecue.  Hell, we’ll barbecue something!”

Bobby knew Sam and Dean had noticed that he was virtually asking Jax’s permission to continue and he didn’t care.  If it helped smooth things to do it, he’d do it, and it was true that this was Jax’s territory, more now than ever in the past.  He needed to be in control and have it be seen by these newcomers that he was in control.  Once Jax had issued his invitation, he waved a hand to the others, gathering the pack around him.  The three hunters and one demon stood there amid the thunder of the Harleys until the dust had settled and the noise distant.

“Come on,”  Dean broke the uneasy quiet.  “No more till we get to your place, Bobby.”

Dean and Sam Winchester weren’t often silent, Bobby thought as he and Crowley rode along in the Impala’s back seat.  He felt as though he was somehow an observer of this scene as well as a participant.  It wasn’t that they couldn’t find words, he thought uncomfortably;  they were going over all that he and Crowley had said.  Crowley, too, they had seen die, and despite their experiences that led them to know that death was not inevitably final, it was a hard thing to let go of that.  He didn’t think they had fully accepted it in his own case.

*

Five minutes after the Impala arrived outside Bobby’s house, his own Mercedes arrived with Venus at the wheel and Kyra and Rafael in the back seat.  Bobby had just sent Sam and Dean off to clean up, with a couple of towels and a reminder to go easy on the water as the buckets in the laundry sink were all there was for now.   He stepped out the door as the three got out of the car.  Crowley had not come inside at all and he stood in the front yard, hands in the pockets of his overcoat which he insisted on wearing, despite the return of the temperature to normal California summer.

“Thank you,”  Bobby told Venus sincerely.  “I only just figured I didn’t make any plans to get everyone back here.”

“No problem, darling;  I volunteered.  When would I next get a chance to drive a classic Mercedes, I asked myself.  We also dropped back to Rafael’s house so he could get some of his things;  he said he didn’t remember to grab them earlier.”

“Nor did I,”  Bobby admitted.  He looked at Kyra, thinking she looked better, but what did he know?  “Did the doctor help you out, sweetheart?”  She nodded but looked embarrassed, avoiding his gaze.  Bobby shrugged;  he’d ask her again without the audience later.  She and Rafael headed to the house, the boy carrying a bag with some clothes in it.  Bobby saw Kyra sideline to Crowley and say something to him, which he answered.  Kyra gave him a quick, fierce hug and tried to get him to accompany her, but he shook his head.  It was odd seeing someone else hug Crowley.  Crowley went stiff with surprise, but didn’t make Kyra let go of him.  Rather, he looked at her as though trying to puzzle her out before she let go and hurried to catch up with Rafael at the door.  He didn’t look particularly King-of-Hellish then to Bobby, just a middle-aged man with an untidy short beard and receding hairline, the sun catching the amber of his eyes as he looked to the hunter with a wry expression, not quite a smile.

“Is he all right?”  Venus asked softly.

“He don’t get on so well with my friends,”  Bobby told her, thinking that was an understatement and a half.  “They’ve got some history.  He’ll be fine.”

“Alexander thinks he’s the devil.”

“Alexander?”

“Tig.”

“He ain’t the devil,”  Bobby answered honestly.  “The devil’s who we’re tryin’ to deal with right now.”

There was way too much understanding in Venus’ expression as she registered this.  “But he’s somethin’ beyond human, isn’t he, Mr Singer?”

“Yes.”

“If you need help, Tig and I, we’re here.”

“Thanks, Venus,”  Bobby said sincerely.  He didn’t know what else to say beyond that, but Venus just patted his arm, smiled beyond him at Crowley and turned to walk up the road to her apartment.

“I just cannot spend another moment in that clubhouse today,”  she mock-whispered over her shoulder, loud enough for Crowley to hear.  “Looking at what they call décor is truly soul destroyin’….and without _any_ of my makeup because Alexander hauled me out of the door so fast.  It’s no place for a lady!”

“That it isn’t,”  Bobby said gravely.  He watched her until he was sure she was safely at the apartment block and then sighed and went to sort out his next problem on the list.  “You comin’ in for this chat?”

“I thought I’d stay out here and admire the flowers, Robert.”

What grass hadn’t been killed by the sudden frost and blanketing snow was now a sodden mess one rainstorm away from a mud puddle.  Crowley’s usually shiny shoes were a mess.  Bobby wondered whether Venus had shoe polish among her extensive household supplies because he sure didn’t.  He stood helplessly beside Crowley and wrapped an arm around him, not knowing what else he could do.  Well, that wasn’t quite right, he thought.  Only that morning he’d exasperatedly asked Crowley to do something to dial down the effects of what they were calling Lucifer’s “Viagra spell,” but the demon had only chuckled and said he was enjoying said effects way too much.

Given that he’d been hoping for another chance, after the trip to Rafael’s home, the hunter admitted silently he kinda enjoyed them too.  Riding a motorcycle had done nothing to quiet those particular urges and his concentration problems did not help their current situation.  He fidgeted a little and sighed again, then jumped and quickly grabbed Crowley’s wandering hand, not without some regret.  “Not in the front yard, jackass.” 

“Well, I’m sure you’re going to say not in the house while Sam and Dean are here….”

“We can think of somethin’, can’t we?”  Bobby kept Crowley’s hand in his, and the demon king gave him a half-annoyed, half-puzzled look.

“Cuddling in the front yard is all right, is it, but I can’t give you a bit of a rub and tug?”

“We’re _not_ – look,  after we sort things out with Sam and Dean and probably after we see the Sons tonight, we can go for a drive.  A short drive.  You know, to help make sure the town’s safe, that nothin’ else is prowling about?”

“That’s a wonderful plan, Robert.”

“Now I’m worried.  C’mon, let’s move things along.”

They went inside.


	12. Philosophy of the Damned

“Go to Kyra’s room,”  Bobby told his juvenile team members, painfully aware of the interested scrutiny from Sam and Dean.  “Now.  Yeah, I’ll call you when we need to talk to you guys, and we will, but right now I need you not here.  Go on.”

Sam and Dean had each taken an armchair, leaving the three seater couch for him and Crowley.  Bobby thought of sitting at the other end to avoid any stupid remarks from the Winchesters, then thought “damn it,” and sat next to Crowley anyway.  Crowley leaned back on the couch, arms folded, as remote from the proceedings as he could manage.

“You seem to have collected another kid, Bobby,”  Sam teased gently.  “What’s the story with this one?”

“School friend of Kyra’s,”  Bobby growled back.  “On his own with his mom and aunt out of town when the snow storm came down and Lucifer, we think, passed through.  Oh yeah, and his mom and auntie are part of a witch clan.  Seems Kyra couldn’t make friends with a boring, mundane kid.  Have you two noticed anything weird regarding witches, by the way?”

“The witches are all gone,”  Sam blurted, joking gone.  “Everywhere we went, any address we had for witches, none of them are there and no one knows anything, like always.   That happened here, didn’t it?  Did this kid’s family vanish?”

“They did,”  Bobby agreed. “Leaving the kid a note, kinda, to come look for me.  Which he’d already done by the time we found the note.  Lucifer’s called them all to come play.”

“You know that for sure?”  Dean asked.

“I know it from the bastard himself, via the mouth of a soon-to-be ex witch, too agoraphobic to leave her house,”  Bobby told him.  “Lucifer probably left her in place for exactly that reason.  Also we were just at Rafael’s house.  His mother and aunt had Lucifer drop a calling geas on them and they bolted out of town, just havin’ enough time to leave the boy a message.  Look, just sit back and listen and hold the comments till the end.  It’ll be quicker if I can just tell you without that.”

It took a couple of beers each – which drained their entire supply, far as Bobby knew – though if anyone knew where there was more beer, the Sons would.  He told them the entire story, with occasional interpolations from Crowley where he had been the only witness, such as when he and Rafael had dragged the dead gorilla-wolf around to the snow-covered back yard of the house.  Crowley, for a wonder, restrained himself and told his parts of the story succinctly and without fuss.  When he got to the part where he had spoken to Chuck, though, Sam and Dean began yelling questions and it took Bobby shouting louder than them to calm it down.

“Where the _fuck_ did that bastard go to?” Dean asked, more quietly then.

“Why can’t he come back and talk to us, then, tell us how we can control Lucifer…”  Sam chimed in.

“What do you fricking mean, he can’t?”  Dean said to Crowley, who raised his eyebrows theatrically and said nothing.  “He was all about us needing to learn the lessons,”  Dean said bitterly.  “Yeah, yeah, can’t intervene or humanity won’t experience spiritual growth or whatever shit.  _Now_ he admits he can’t?”

“He could have been lying, one of the times or both,”  Crowley said, giving him an exasperated look.  “Also there’s probably some other interpretation neither of us have thought of, him being millenia old or whatever it is.  Bobby, now may be the time to explain to Heckle and Jeckle what it was that Chuck dumped on my head, you think?”

“Chuck said we need to get Cas back and he told Crowley how,”  Bobby raised his voice again, seeing Dean about to go off.  “Just listen, damn it.  Chuck gave Castiel’s vessel to Crowley, but it’s just the vessel.  He said some vague fancy stuff about Castiel’s essence being part of a freaking ghost storm, whatever that is, in New York, but that a séance to call his spirit in could unite the two.  We need him to help us track the witches….”

“You’re losing them, love,”  Crowley said.

“Do you have to call him that while we’re sitting here?”  Sam groused.  He was in fact the only one still sitting.  Dean was on his feet as though ready to rush off to New York right away.

“Whatever,”  Bobby growled.  “We have the vessel, as I said.  With your help, we can do the séance.  I dunno why we have to have your help as so far I am this close to throwing your asses out the door.”  He raised his voice as he stood up.

“So show us where Cas is!”  Dean also raised his voice.  Crowley got to his feet and headed for the door.  “Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m going to let Kyra and Rafael know hell hasn’t broken loose in here, all signs to the contrary,”  Crowley said to Bobby, apparently with perfect calm, but the hunter saw the red flicker in his eyes.

“Good idea,”  Bobby told him and swung back to face the Winchesters, who were looking incredulous as Crowley left the room.

“You’re letting him be alone with those kids?”  Sam asked, the question no less painful for being quite sincere.

“Sit down,”  Bobby said to Dean.  “The kids are fine.  Cas’s vessel is also fine, it’s in the spare room.  Castiel himself is apparently swirling around in the upper air above New York City.  I suggest you get some rest.  We’ll drop in on the Sons’ barbecue after nightfall, since we’re too damn short of food here not to.  I’m guessin’ you two are not too freaked out by outlaw bikers for that?  I’m gonna bring some bedding in here – there’s not much but you’ll manage – and then you two will stay out of my face and you will leave Crowley alone, because we need him too for the séance to work properly.”

“We need to do it now,”  Dean said.  Looking at him, Bobby thought he got just why the Winchesters were needed for the séance.  That singleminded determination to save their friend was what would get Cas back here into his vessel.  Bobby knew he wasn’t close enough to the angel to do it and Crowley, well, Crowley wasn’t in the saving people business.

“When did you two last sleep?”  Bobby asked and they shrugged.

“Coupla hours night before last,”  Sam said.  “We’d just battered our way through a mob of honest to God zombies and I think they’d stomped over any other monster around for miles.  I hate to say it, Bobby, but I don’t know if we’re coming back from this one.  I mean, people.  We met small groups here and there but the towns are just broken and no one has any news from the government or even any big city.”

“Okay, okay,”  Dean said when Sam fell silent.  “I get it.  We’ll crash for a while and after we see your biker buddies, we’ll do the ritual.  I’m not leaving Cas out there any longer than we have to.”

Finally the house was silent.  Kyra, when Bobby came into her room where she waited with Rafael and Crowley, seemed quiet but composed.  She looked at Bobby.  “Rafael’s staying in here,”  she said, as though she expected argument.  Crowley smirked, raising his eyebrows.

“That’s fine, sweetheart.  Sam and Dean are gonna stay in the lounge room, since Crowley’s filled the spare room up with witchy stuff.  Don’t worry about all the noise they make.  They just get kinda worked up; you need to just let ‘em yell and get it out of their systems.”

Crowley coughed and rolled his eyes at that.

“Everybody needs to take a nap now,”  Bobby decreed.  “We’re gonna go for barbecue with the Sons in a couple of hours” – Kyra and Rafael both looked happier to hear that.  “And then Crowley, Sam, Dean and I have a séance to hold.”

“I can help,”  Rafael offered.

“You been at seances?”

“Sure, as a student…”

“No, because if I let you in, I have to let Kyra in and we are not goin’ there.  You can stand guard from outside the house.”  He paused, looking the question and Rafael nodded his understanding.  If things went rabidly south, he’d try to save them.

Crowley got off Kyra’s bed where he had been sitting and followed the hunter out.  “She didn’t argue,”  he noted.

“Yeah.  Be afraid.”  Bobby closed the bedroom door, heaving a huge sigh.  His mind roiled with tension and although he badly needed sleep, it was going to be some time before he could settle enough to get it.  When he turned, he saw Crowley taking off his coat.  The demon’s eyes gleamed almost golden in the afternoon light.  Handsome and compellingly masculine, he smirked as though he knew the thoughts going through Bobby’s head. 

“Well, love,”  he said, his voice low and raspy in a way which got Bobby’s attention right away.  “You going to tell me not with the Winchesters and the kids in the house?  We waiting for car sex?”

Bobby wondered just how this had come about, that he was standing in his bedroom having this particular talk with the King of Hell.  It wasn’t even 24 hours since Bobby had been ridden by that spell of Lucifer’s, designed to impel a man to rape without conscience.  He’d gone at Crowley like he didn’t intend to hear no and that didn’t sit well with him, no matter how much Crowley had enjoyed it.  But now, Bobby had that shivery, pleasant ache in his body again, particularly lower down, and he _wanted_ , damned if he didn’t.  “I hoped we could just wait till everythin’ was done, till they were gone,”  he growled.  “After last night, I didn’t expect to be able to for days.”

“But that’s changed, hasn’t it, darling?”  Crowley asked.  He came over and stroked a hand down Bobby’s broad chest teasingly, resting it on his belt buckle.  “Darling, want to know how much I care if your boys barge in on you drilling me to China?”

“Not really,”  Bobby said, sighing inwardly as he saw Crowley’s grin.  “But I have to get some rest.  You can join me, or stand there and watch, or go do demon stuff somewhere else.”  He undressed, trying to act unconcerned, and climbed into bed with a slight groan.  He closed his eyes and found himself drifting almost at once, stirring again a few moments later when he felt Crowley getting into bed behind him.  He was more relieved than he wanted to admit that his words hadn’t angered Crowley, who could get angry when he was balked, in large things or small.  That, Bobby thought, was part of what Hell had made him, but it didn’t make those traits easy to deal with.  He turned in bed so that he was facing Crowley, dark shapes in the darkened room, and pulled him carefully into his arms.  Saying nothing about fear or regret or dark magic, just holding him, the body which Crowley did not technically own.  And the King of Hell, past and maybe present, said nothing either, but remained on silent guard while his hunter slept.

*

“So, you’ve had a run in with the Sons before?”  Bobby asked Sam, a couple of hours later when everyone was presumably refreshed and assembling outside.  Nobody, with the possible exception of Crowley, looked like they were.  When Sam looked blankly back at him Bobby sighed.  “Well, that cryptic warnin’ didn’t come out of nowhere, Sam.”

“It was when I was at Stanford,”  Sam said, intercepting a what-the-hell look from Dean.  “A bunch of us drove out to this country bar and I guess the Sons were on a ride, because they were way out of their territory.  Some guys in the bar told us who they were when they came in, maybe five or six of ‘em.  They were playing pool and drinking and a couple of my friends decided to challenge “the bikies” to a game.  No, _not_ me, Dean.  Okay, so Jess was there and she pulled me back down when I tried to get up.  I don’t know what set ‘em off but something sure did, because inside of ten minutes there was a brawl going on among the bikers and my friends.  Jess dragged me outside just before the cops got there and we, uh, took off.  The other guys got arrested and they wouldn’t talk to me after that.”

“So what was so special about this bar brawl, bikers or not?”  Bobby asked.

Sam hesitated, looking troubled as he recalled the night.  “The bikers’ leader – President - was this older man, hatchet face, meanest looking guy I ever saw.  I saw him pounding on one of my friends, just punching him in the face hard as he could.  Two of the _bikers_ dragged this guy off, Bobby, like they knew he wouldn’t stop, even if he was going to kill my friend.  I made Jess let me go and I was about to come into it, but then as I said, the biker leader’s own people intervened.”

“Well, there’s been a change of chiefs,”  Bobby said.  “Everybody get in the car and I’ll give you the short version on the way.”  With comments from Crowley, Rafael _and_ Kyra, he did so, ending just as they pulled into the lot of Teller Morrow.  “So don’t start a damn thing, not even a pool game.”

*

Bobby sat Dean, Sam and Crowley in chairs in the lounge area of the Sons’ clubhouse and deputised Rafael and Kyra to be servers, trekking back and forth between them and the barbecue set up behind the clubhouse where rabbits and a small deer were being cooked.  The Sons mostly let them alone, except for Jax, who came over with Chibs at his side to get a sense of the strangers.  Bobby had flat out begged the Winchesters to at least try to act like he, Bobby, was in charge of their small group, because that kind of wolf pack thinking made sense to the Sons and they did not need a turf war flare up.

Maybe it was fatigue that did it, or perhaps Sam and Dean were actually listening to him, Bobby had no idea, but they mostly stayed put and mostly behaved.  At one point Jax, nodding thanks to Kyra as she delivered a plate of roasted rabbit to him, was asking about how things had gone down “where you’re from” on the night winter had paid Charming a visit.

“Kansas,”  Dean said.  “Town of Lebanon.”  Jax shrugged.  “Centre of the USA.  No, I mean that, it’s smack in the middle on the map.  Only claim to fame the place has.”

“So did weird shit go down like here?  I guess Bobby’s told you – we had fucking monsters in the town and this storm….fucking snow and sleet in the middle of summer.”

“Jax knows about hunting, our kind of hunting,”  Bobby said when Dean shot him a look.  “His stepfather was killed by a vampire on that night just a few paces beyond that door.”

“I’m sorry, man…”  Dean began.

“I don’t give a crap about your sorry,”  Jax said, calmly enough.  He leaned back in his chair and ate a bite of rabbit thigh.  Beside him, Chibs stayed on alert;  the good beta wolf.  “Just FYI; my mother has also gone missing, though she decided that on her own far as I can tell.  We’ve got a town in pieces here, no communication and no fucking help, which the townsfolk need even if we don’t.  So I need to know if you saw the damn National Guard in your town or on the way or what the hell is going on.”

“No,”  Dean said, matching stares in a way that made Bobby’s heart sink for their chances of peace.  Sam muttered something to his brother, who ignored it.  “Heard some radio news, everybody yelling for help but nobody getting it.  The television stations are off the air and we haven’t been able to access the Internet for more than a few minutes at a go and then, you guessed it, photos of storm damage and dead things and yeah, people’s cats.  We had a storm blow through Lebanon but the temperature didn’t change much.  Sounds crazy even to us, but that storm blew monsters at us.  Pack of werewolves – some of ‘em men, some of ‘em wolves and some twisted kinda creatures neither one thing nor the other.  They ripped the crap out of Lebanon and any one stupid enough to be outside.”

“We saw the aftermath, before you ask,”  Sam put in, his deep even voice helping to dial down Dean’s theatrics.  “Our place is underground so we didn’t even know at first, till the Internet went down…”

“The Internet?”  Jax asked mockingly.  “That your only clue?  How about your fricking lights going out?”

“We’ve got generators,”  Dean said, like a challenge.

Bobby looked from him to Jax, dark to blond, polar opposites handsome and fierce and dominant.  In another moment, it’d be a fuck or fight scenario, he thought and wondered whether he really had been hanging around too much with the King of Hell.  Who was being suspiciously quiet and well behaved in the chair next to him, only giving Bobby a bland sort of smile when he glanced at him to check.

“And we’re outside of the town,”  Sam went on, speaking to Chibs since Dean and Jax were still glaring at one another. “Lebanon is tiny, you know, only a couple of hundred permanent residents.  By the time we knew and went to look, well, the town isn’t there any more.”

“Your hometown?”  the Scot asked.

“No, though we are from Kansas.  We moved around a lot.”

And that, fortunately, was as fired up as it got.  Bobby rode herd until everyone was fed and until Jax, he thought, was satisfied that he’d gotten the Winchesters’ account and that they weren’t going to interfere with whatever the Sons would rebuild here.  He was concerned at one point when he lost track of Dean in the crowded clubhouse _and_ couldn’t put eyes on Jax Teller either.  Kyra then disappeared to talk to Tara Knowles, the doctor, and by the time Bobby found everybody, he was ready to pull out his remaining hair.

“No,”  he said aloud as he parked the Mercedes in front of his house.  “We’re not doin’ a goddamn working tonight.  Everybody’s exhausted and strung out and that’s damn dangerous when you’re talking spirit contact.  Don’t argue with me, Dean, or you, Sam.  Tomorrow – it don’t have to be dark, you know – we’ll get to it.”

Nobody said anything for a few moments.

“Can we get out of the car?”  Kyra asked, suspiciously docile.

“You can get out of the car and go wash up and go to bed, Kyra.  Rafael, you’re back on the floor in her room and if I hear you move in the night, I’m gonna shoot through the wall because I’m the crazy father with the shotgun.  Good night, Sam, Dean, and don’t leave the lounge room.”

*

Sam and Dean Winchester could honestly say they had never been in a situation quite like this one.  They sat encamped in the lounge room with sleeping bags and blankets, the latter donated by Bobby.  Despite Bobby assuring them he’d warded thoroughly, that hadn’t stopped the brothers setting up their usual wards.  There were going-to-bed sounds around them.  They heard the two kids talking and even laughing as they prepared for their sleepover.  Bobby padded down the hallway to the bathroom and cursed loudly when he found it occupied.  The brothers heard him demanding of Crowley what the fuck he needed to do for so damn long when the shower water was off and to move it because he, Bobby, wasn’t planning on using the bushes outside if he didn’t have to.

“What’s Crowley say?”  Sam murmured after this.

“Dunno, can’t hear properly.  Something about his beard.”

“They’re being frigging _domestic_ , Dean.  This is just wrong.”

A door opened loudly and they heard Bobby’s growl of “At last!” and Crowley’s rasping chuckle.  Then the kids’ door opened and they heard Kyra saying they’d forgotten glasses of water and Bobby had told them not to go anywhere but the bathroom and the stored water was in the kitchen.  Crowley’s sigh was audible from the lounge room and then he appeared in what the Winchesters could swear was a black silk dressing gown with red and gold dragons all over it.  He smirked to the brothers, continued through the lounge room to the kitchen and presently returned with two glasses of water.  Silent with disbelief, Sam and Dean watched until he was gone back towards the bedrooms.

“Did you see that dressing gown?”

“I was trying not to look, Dean.  Did you look?”

“No, I did not fucking look.”

“Bobby said to mind our language around the kids.”

“I will when he does.  And the kids aren’t in the room.”

“Just go to sleep, Dean.”

*

Inside the bedroom, Crowley made a slight gesture and the Winchesters’ voices faded out.  Bobby was sitting on the bed, the blanket jammed into his mouth in a vain attempt to stop himself bellowing with laughter.  Crowley had come in, told him, “Listen to this, love,” and done whatever spell it was to magnify the boys’ voices.  “I wish you’d heard what they were saying before I got in here,”  Crowley said.  “But I can imitate them perfectly…”

“Please, no,”  Bobby begged, spitting out the blanket and wiping his eyes.  “Hope you don’t think you’re gettin’ any tonight, because I’m too beat to go driving and no way can I convince myself they wouldn’t hear us in here.”

“I _can_ soundproof the room, darling.”

“C’mere.”  Bobby patted the bed, still chuckling, and Crowley joined him, smoothing the dressing gown carefully around himself and settled against the hunter, who put an arm around him.  Not that he would ever admit it, but this simple act was enough to jolt him, the kind of affection no one had ever shown him.  Bobby nuzzled into his beard, kissing him lightly and Crowley turned his face into the hunter’s chest, while Bobby’s hand moved to rub his back.  “I’m too damn tired and too damn old,”  Bobby murmured.  “Why does this shit go on and on happening, Crowley?  Why can’t Lucifer just take off and do what he likes _without_ destroyin’ everything and everyone?”

“Philosophy of the damned, love.  It’s not in his nature.  He holds a grudge against all creation and he doesn’t – can’t – believe differently.”

“You can see that.  Why can’t he?”

“I’m only four hundred years old or so, Robert.  I’m still adaptable.”

Bobby sighed deeply, rubbing gentle circles on his back while Crowley closed his eyes, giving way to it.  “That really all it is?  Because creation’s in a shitload of trouble if the people – and demon – in this house are all that’s standin’ between it and chaos.”

“You’re not all,”  Crowley disagreed.  “I may not be travelling far at the moment, love, but while I did, I could zap around the world like that and see the sights,” and he raised a hand to snap his fingers.  “There’s monsters and demons rampaging about, but plenty of you hunters and other humans in various countries doing their bit.  The witches who serve Lucifer are gathering together in many locations.  And no, I haven’t been able to find where any of them are gathering, Lucifer has been blocking me.”

“So we’re only responsible for the continental US.  Great,”  Bobby grumbled, but he was too weary to freak out.  “I gotta sleep.  Sorry.”

*

He was out of bed long before dawn, battling strangers who had apparently run out of unguarded sources to loot.  Two men climbed in through the living room window and were confronted – and soundly thrashed – by Sam and Dean, while Bobby himself cornered a third man in the kitchen and knocked him down with the butt of his shotgun.  Crowley had gone outside and Bobby thought he heard a scream, but when Crowley strolled back in, he only shrugged to the question.  “Not safe wandering at night now, you know that, darling,”  he said, but he had a look of feral satisfaction Bobby recognised, and streaks of blood on his hands.

“What do you want to do with these bastards?”  Dean asked Bobby, indicating their prisoners, the one still unconscious and the others on their knees, hands bound and spitting obscenities until Sam shoved his pistol between the teeth of one and suggested they keep quiet.

“Well there’s no police to hand them over to,”  Bobby answered.

“Give them to the Sons,”  Crowley suggested. 

“No, fuck it, you can’t do that,”  one of the men said.  “We only wanted to get some food for our families.”

“Yeah, so you can’t ask?”  Sam demanded.  “It’s not even been a week.  The town shouldn’t even be out of food yet.  If you put some effort in, you could find food for yourselves.”

“Town’s cleared out,”  the other man awake seconded.  “Those fucking bikers went around and collected anything edible and stored it at their place.”

“Further out?”  Sam asked. 

“The Mayans are in Stockton, some other gangs as well.  They’re crucifying people who tried to loot their supplies.”

Bobby thought this could well be true, but he couldn’t think of anything beyond what Crowley had suggested.  If the Sons of Anarchy were, ironically, the only remaining law, let them _be_ the law and deal with looters like these three.  “Keep an eye on them,”  he told the Winchesters.  “I’ll go talk to Tig;  he’ll probably be up the road at Venus’ place.”

The SOA sergeant-at-arms answered the door half naked, if you could say that when his upper body was covered in tattoos.  It was still too dark for Bobby to make out what they were.  “Hey, everything okay at your place?”  Tig asked with concern.  “Your little girl all right?”

“She’s fine,”  Bobby assured him.  “But we just had to deal with some guys breaking in, looking to take our food.  My friends have ‘em under control, but we figured we should ask Jax what he wants to do with them.”

“Can’t you just shoot them?”  Tig asked plaintively, scratching at his side.

“That official?”

Tig sighed deeply.  “Bring ‘em up to the clubhouse in the morning.  I’ll ride in with you;  stop by here.”

Bobby reported this when he got back, which didn’t seem to please either Winchester.  “Why are you falling over yourself to crawl to these bikers?”  Dean asked, not seeming to notice the oddness of his remark.  Sam grinned;  clearly he did. 

“Because I don’t want the job of bein’ in charge here,”  Bobby said bluntly.  “I want to move on and leave them to deal with it, so that means they got to deal with it.  Whatever this town becomes – either back to what it was before or something else – the Sons are part of it.  We’re not.  It’s not what we do.”

“Aren’t there any cops left?  What about councillors?”  Sam asked.

“I went around the day after the snowstorm and couldn’t find any of the above,”  Bobby told him grimly.  “So we’ll drop these losers on the Sons tomorrow morning – this morning, I guess it is – and then attend to our own business.”

*

Dean said he couldn’t sleep anyway and would guard the prisoners until everyone else woke up.  Sam said he’d watch with him since he didn’t think he’d be sleeping much in the same room with his brother and the terrified, foul-mouthed looters.

Bobby, who’d ordered Kyra and Rafael to stay in her room,  looked in to let them know what was going on and found both kids fully dressed, sitting on Kyra’s bed.  “Get some rest, everything’s okay,”  he told them, pretending not to notice Rafael quietly slide off to sit on the floor.

“Are those men still here?”  Kyra asked.

“Yeah, but Sam and Dean are watching them.  It’s fine.  I’m goin’ back to bed myself.”

When he closed the bedroom door behind him again, he found Crowley back in bed, clothes off again, gazing up at the ceiling.  He’d pulled the curtain open to let what moonlight there was brighten the room and was lying casually on top of the bed.  He hadn’t covered himself with a sheet and grinned at Bobby when the latter sat down to take off his boots, trying not to look as though he was looking.  “See anything you like, love?”

Bobby saw all too much that he liked and grimly reminded himself of the full house beyond the door, including their intruders.  He closed the curtains, which made Crowley chuckle, got undressed in the dark, having no choice there, and climbed into bed, awkwardly pulling the sheet back up, for what good it did, and determinedly trying to think about other things.  Boring things.  Icy cold showers.  Then he sighed loudly as he felt a warm hand on his stomach, exploring downwards. 

“You get off on torturing me, don’t you?”  he remarked to the dark.

“Demon, love.”

“Yeah, I did notice.  Okay, but we have to be quiet!”

“I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm getting to the crunch, I promise! Next chapter they go all out to rescue Cas from the ghost storms (or wherever!) Thanks to those with the stamina to keep reading. I'm planning another ficlet concerning Bobby's and Crowley's efforts to keep quiet in a house containing the Winchesters, some burglars and two kids - and how reliable is a demon's promise anyway?


	13. Contact With The Enemy

The light was muted next morning and when Bobby went outside to look around, he saw the vast rolling dustclouds in the distance, turning the filtered sunlight dull orange, like an oncoming solar eclipse.  He had heard nothing in the night except the roar of Tig’s motorcycle, or maybe one of his gang mates, patrolling the night hours.  The street was weirdly silent, as the whole area had been for the last several nights since the snowstorm and the collapse of the grid.

Sam and Dean pushed their prisoners, hands bound behind them, out of the house and into the Mercedes, which Bobby was to drive over to the Sons’ clubhouse, with the Winchesters following in the Impala in case of trouble.  He’d already checked the bonds and they were secure, as they should be considering he’d helped John teach Sam and Dean to tie them.

“What’s Crowley doin’ while we’re away?”  Dean demanded of Bobby.

“Babysitting,”  the hunter replied with a warning glare.

At the clubhouse, a grim Jax took possession of the looters and turned them over to several of his bikers to be secured.  Bobby took the chance to come up beside him and ask about the food stores.  “The guys said that the Sons had cleared the town out.  What’s happenin’ to those stores?”

Jax scoffed, “We got _some_ of the stores and we also gave supplies to some of the townsfolk.  Whatever we do, we don’t starve people.”

“But the gangs are collecting what’s available faster than some of those folk can find it?”

“We take care of our own.  Same as you do.” 

To that, Bobby had no answer.  “So what’ll you do with those guys?” he asked the biker.  Jax shrugged and started away.

“Not going to waste food on them,”  he said over his shoulder.

“Bobby, come on,”  Dean said behind the older hunter.  “We got work to do.”

It was early afternoon before they got started.

Kyra and Rafael were stationed out in the front garden to intercept any callers, both of them uncharacteristically quiet – well, uncharacteristically for Kyra.  Bobby admitted he didn’t know Rafael well enough to tell and for most of the time they had spent together, the kid had been under a hell of a lot of stress.  He hoped, though, that the boy’s befriending of Kyra hadn’t been according to his mother’s instructions, because that would do some real damage.

“We’re gonna put up a warding circle,”  Bobby told them.  “Once we do, you won’t hear anything and you mustn’t come inside.  If things go to hell – hopefully not literally - get up the road to Venus’ place.  Same deal if it gets to night, you haven’t heard anything but nobody’s come to get you.  This could take hours, it could be over in minutes.  All clear?”  They nodded seriously; witch and hunter-in-training.  Bobby knew it was unlikely in the extreme that they would obey his instructions if things really went to chaos, but it wasn’t like there were guidelines for this kind of thing.  He gave Kyra an awkward hug and patted Rafael’s shoulder before turning back to join the others.

He half expected WWIII to have broken out by the time he got back, but though Sam and Dean stood tensely across the room from Crowley, all seemed quiet.  The Winchesters were in their T-shirt and jeans garb, the King of Hell in his full (second best) suit, messing with the ingredients set out before him on the small table moved from Bobby’s bedside.  The couch and chairs had been moved out of the lounge room, the drapes closed and the floor swept – by Bobby – while Crowley, he claimed, supervised.  The last object, of course, was Castiel’s vessel, which Sam and Dean had stretched out on the floor, placing his trench coat tidily around him.

“I’ll need you to do the actual casting, Robert,”  Crowley said, not looking at him.

“Don’t you…”

“Salt, Robert.”

“Oh.  Right.  You gonna stay inside the circle then?”

“I’ll have to once it’s set, won’t I?  If we split the working, we need to divide all of it, so I will take fire.  Dean and Sam, you decide which of you will do air and water.”  His voice was so matter of fact and free from his usual snark that even Bobby felt a little astonished.  When the Winchesters didn’t speak for a moment Crowley went on, “I suggest Air for Dean and Water for Sam – you know the ritual?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Sam said but Dean made a feeble sort of mutter.

“Dean!”  Bobby muttered, a growl of embarrassment. 

“It’s been a while, okay?  I usually do the, uh, short version.”

“I’ll prompt him,”  Sam said.

“Once that’s done, we will all stand around the table for the calling ritual.  I’ll provide the blood.  Once I open the portal, Dean needs to take over.”

“Why’d you want me to do it?”

“Seriously?”  Crowley asked, flicking a glance at Bobby, who nodded resignedly.  The King of Hell wore the expression of a teacher faced with a student whose denseness can still amaze him.  He spoke slowly, emphasising each word in a way Bobby was sure was going to get him punched fairly soon by Dean, once he got through his current confusion.  “You have the necessary emotional link with Castiel.  He will respond to that better than to any of us, though he knows us.  When we locate his spirit, you must be the one to, ah, get a grip as it were.” 

Dean’s face changed;  he still looked embarrassed but a light had dawned, Bobby decided, trying not to roll his eyes.  The angel had told Dean he had come to raise him from perdition, when he was rescued from Hell.  This had to sound kinda similar.

“Uh, it’s not like it’s a gay thing or whatever,”  Dean mumbled.

“I don’t give a shit,”  Crowley said, still enunciating very clearly.  Bobby muttered and the King glanced at him before turning his attention back on the older Winchester.  “I know forty years or whatever your age, is not very long in the scheme of things, Squirrel, but have you truly made it this far without knowing that the varieties of love are as extensive as the number of humans on this plane?  That love can be a thing without the meeting of naughty bits and the exchange of bodily fluids?”

“Crowley!”  Sam was moved to exclaim, talking over Dean’s annoyed, “I’m not frigging _forty_!”

“Whatever.  Get a grip when the time comes.  And get a grip now, come to think of it.”

“You know you could just have said there’s love between friends as well as actual, um, lovers?”  Bobby said to the demon.

“Where’s the fun in that?  Let’s move this along.”

When the warding circle was up, all of them felt the difference, the waiting tension in the air as the magic took hold.  Crowley had lit his candles with a flamboyant flick of his hand, setting them in the north, south, east and west of the circle.  Bobby threw the salt, Sam made his circuit tossing drops of consecrated water from the plain silver goblet Crowley gave him and Dean lit the incense, swinging the censer as he moved, following Sam’s murmured prompts.  Sulfur blended with the sweet, smoky scent as witch magic encountered the presence of a demon within the circle.

The only lights, now that the drapes were closed to create a dull twilight, were from the candles.  As the others looked at him, Crowley’s eyes flared a sudden, startling red.  He began to speak in Enochian, giving each word precise, careful emphasis, and the air in the room seemed to tense, waiting for what he was building to be completed.  As he had previously instructed, the others stood still and silent.  They would have needed the books, and far more reciting and preparation and physical ingredients such as blood, but Crowley was the King of Hell and needed only himself.  The portal he opened would take its energy from him and he would hold it as long as he could.  He finished in a rasping rattle of words that struck upon the ear like rocks, heavy and crushing.  The humans all winced as they experienced a sensation of pressure on their ears, as though they were riding within a large aircraft.  A roaring sound, as of a distant storm closing gradually, made itself known and the house itself began to rattle under their feet.

“Dean,”  Crowley said, the normality of his voice making them jump.  “Your move.”

Dean stood as though stunned for a moment.  He flicked a glance at the others, clearly not happy with his audience.  “Uh, Cas?”  he said, raising his voice a little as the roaring sound became a bit louder, seeming to come from all around them.  He focused his attention awkwardly on the unoccupied vessel at their feet.  “We need your help, man, we need you to come back to your, uh, vessel.”  When there was no noticeable response, he looked to Crowley.  “I’m not seeing any kinda portal opening in the air.  Just saying.”

“Keep going, Dean,”  Sam muttered.

“Come on, Cas, talk to us!”

The roaring grew and they all turned about, trying to see where it was coming from.  “It’s all around,”  Crowley said loudly.  “We are the portal, the spirits pass through, within the circle.  Those able to step over the salt, don’t do it!”  The rattling increased and all the candles went out at the same time.  Crowley spoke in Enochian again, the words like the rattling of stones, not meant for a human throat, even one that was the meatsuit of a demon.  The roaring changed, as though something had clarified the reception, blocking out some of the static.

“Voices,”  Bobby said, realising it, “that’s hundreds of voices!  How are we ever gonna pick Cas out of that?”

“He’ll do the picking, if you just get him here.  Make him focus.  He’s probably not even aware of himself, it’s like he’s asleep and dreaming and you’re trying to wake him up.”  Crowley spoke to Dean as though the two of them were the only ones present.  Around them the house shook as though a giant grabbed it and tried to free it from the ground.  The containers of salt and incense fell from the makeshift altar and the candles fell over.  “You’ll never hear me say this again, but keep talking, Squirrel,”  Crowley murmured, a low rasp in the shadows.>

“Cas,”  Dean tried again, “it’s me, Dean.  Wake the hell up, man, we have to talk to you!  You got chucked out of your vessel but we got it here;  it’s kinda messed up because Chuck dropped it on Crowley, literally dropped it on him and he wasn’t expecting it.”  Dean laughed briefly, stopped when he saw Crowley’s expression.  “We need your help bad, don’t mind admitting it, and it would be real good if you could come back.  Please, Cas.”

“It’s not working,”  Sam began reluctantly, and then stopped speaking.   He pointed at the vessel, but when the others followed his direction, the vessel still lay still.  “He kicked the floor with his foot.  I heard this little thump – light the candles again, Crowley!”

“Pick one up first unless you want Robert’s house on fire.”

When Sam did, Crowley pointed at it and it again sprang to life.  Sam knelt, holding the candle above Castiel’s vessel.  “Talk to him, Dean!”

“Cas, please, wake up and answer my frigging prayer,”  Dean said, real exasperation as well as embarrassment in his voice now.  “Look, we can watch the one with the pizza man and the babysitter again and I’ll explain it to you properly this time, okay?  We’ll lift the rule about not talking when you watch porn.”  By now he had the attention of everybody in the room, and Bobby hoped desperately that Rafael and Kyra had obeyed orders and stayed out of earshot.  There was supposed to be a cone of silence, but he remembered how well that had worked for Maxwell Smart.

Castiel’s vessel moved and he gasped.  Dean and Sam hurried closer, both talking over one another, but then they heard Castiel’s precise, deep voice, the way he spoke when he had the authority of Heaven, not when he was confused and alienated by the ways of current humanity.  “I’m sorry, Dean, but Lucifer has set demons on me and they are almost here.  If I stay, so do they and they will destroy you.”

“Crowley’s here!  He can deal with pissant demons.”

“Not these.”  Castiel struggled to sit up and the brothers knelt to help him, letting Bobby and Crowley actually see what was going on.  Certainly this appeared to be success;  Castiel breathing hard in distress but here, really here.  “Crowley is weakened;  he is cut off from Hell now that Lucifer rules, and the Morningstar has sent new Knights above.  I endanger all of you to perdition if I stay.  You must find the witches.  Lucifer will use their power to close Heaven off forever from the Earth plane and no help, ever, will reach you again.”

“Not such a bad thing,”  Crowley muttered.  He raised his voice.  “Where are the witches, Cas?  Where’s he calling them to?”

Castiel collapsed back to the plank floor, appearing now to be in full coronary distress.  He was dying again, Bobby saw in horror;  his vessel was rejecting him the way it might a new organ.  Dean had hold of the angel’s shoulders and was trying to talk to him, though no one else could hear what he was saying. 

“He will drain all life from them, every witch on the Earth plane.  He no longer needs to restrict himself only to those who swore to Satan.  Any witch with any power…”

“Cas, where are the fricking witches?”  Dean yelled, and this time Cas managed to focus on him, breathing in great gasps.  He hadn’t responded to anyone else, Bobby saw grimly, and Dean was losing him now too.

“Here!”  Castiel managed to say.  “They’re here.”  His right hand flailed in the air, completely failing to indicate any direction and then, in true dramatic style, he went limp.  Dean shouted and then started CPR until Sam grabbed him and shouted in his ear that it wasn’t working, he had to stop now.  Even then, Dean did not stop until he was panting for breath himself and both Bobby and Sam had to grab him and pull him away from Castiel’s vessel.

The front door opened abruptly and both Rafael and Kyra were in the room.  At that moment, Bobby, Sam and Dean fell in an unbalanced heap to the floor, brushing over the salt line as they did so.  Rafael looked at Crowley, as though waiting for him to do something, and then muttered something in Latin.  The pressure was abruptly gone from the room, the magic dispelled.  Bobby, muttering direly, clambered to his feet, reluctantly accepting Crowley’s hand to help him up.

“That went well,”  the King commented, and found himself the subject of glares from Sam and Dean and a resigned mutter from Bobby.   Rafael and Kyra looked at the vessel lying on the floor for all the world like a dead body.

“Okay, out,”  Bobby ordered, waving his hands at them as though he was trying to herd a couple of cats.  His efforts worked about that well, until he sighed and turned to the Winchesters, seeing that at least one had managed to extricate himself from the heap on the floor.  “Sam, would you please pick them up by their collars and drop them inside Kyra’s room?”

“We’re going!”  Kyra said with dignity, before Sam had time to do more than look towards them.  Rafael followed her reluctantly, clearly wanting to hear what the adults would say, but no one spoke until they heard the definite closing of a door.

“What the fuck happened?”  Sam inquired of his brother.

“Cas wouldn’t listen.  So what’s freaking new?”  Dean was the last of them to stand, and he continued to stare at the angel’s crumpled vessel on the ground.  “Why didn’t you tell us Lucifer was making new Knights?”  He turned on Crowley, fists clenching. 

“Because I didn’t know, Squirrel.”   Crowley’s answer was dry as dead leaves.  “I’m cut off from Hell.  That means they don’t cc me in any more to the departmental memos.”

“So how do we get rid of them?  They’re tailing Cas, that’s the guts of it,  if we can take them down, he’s free to come back to his vessel.”  Dean’s voice held a new, desperate resolve.  “We’ll take his vessel back to the bunker, that’s got to be safer than this place, and then we get things together to get rid of these demons.”

“Don’t be a fool, Winchester,”  Crowley snapped.  “It doesn’t matter how thick the walls are;  even if they’re as thick as your skull, they won’t keep out Knights of Hell and certainly not Lucifer himself.  The Men of Letters got wiped out in that bunker, remember.   _If_ we get Castiel back, he doesn’t particularly need this vessel, you know, we can get him another fool willing to give it up for Heaven.”

“So let them take it,”  Bobby said to him in exasperation.  “ _After_ we brainstorm together about this.  There’s no point in you two heading back up there on your own to a destroyed town.”

“No point in you staying here in this one,”  Sam said, and his more even tone had even Crowley nodding at that. 

“Where’s better?”  Bobby growled.  “Like Crowley says; physical location don’t mean shit now.  Unless it’s the physical location of the witches and if we have a way to whack them when we get there.”

“You said they all got a geas slapped on them by Lucifer,”  Sam said.  “They had no choice about heading off to wherever he was summoning them.”  Bobby nodded, ruffled and puzzled.  “Well, you’ve got a witch.  That kid Rafael.”

“He’s not initiated.”

“He’s got to be on the verge of it.”

“So?  His coven aren’t here to do the ritual.”

“It doesn’t have to be them,”  Sam said.  “Anyone who knows the ritual could initiate him.  It helps if they have or have had connections with witches, but self-initiation is a thing.”  He looked at Crowley.

“That could work,”  Dean commented.  “If the geas hits Rafael and he gets the compulsion to wander off, all we got to do is track him.”

Bobby glared.  “So you’d send a thirteen year old kid off into the apocalyptic fucking wilderness with a tracer on him?  Also, Lucifer did that spell, past tense.  It’s not gonna suddenly reactivate, oh, there’s a new witch, got to grab him.”

“I could not have put that better myself, love,”  Crowley said.  His voice was calm, but there was a note in it which made Bobby feel abruptly uneasy.

“What?” he snapped.

“It’s Lucifer,”  Crowley said, looking back at Bobby as though the two of them were alone.  “He’s above all the rules, love; he made most of them.  I don’t know what will happen if I initiate Rafael.  He _might_ be caught up in the geas.”

“Well, we’re not taking another step before we talk to the kids,”  Bobby said.  Dean began to speak again but Bobby overrode him.  “Make yourselves useful.  Take, you know, the vessel back to the spare room…”

“Crowley’s lab,”  Sam said, rolling his eyes.

“Now,”  Bobby ordered.  Reluctantly the Winchesters obeyed, much as had the thirteen year olds before them.  Bobby took a deep breath, praying direly for patience he doubted he was going to get.  “Crowley?  Thanks.  I know you did the best you could.”  He quickly stepped forward and put his arms around the surprised demon.  “While they’re not here to be stupid,”  he murmured and kissed Crowley’s cheek.  “Let’s go talk to Kyra and Rafael;  they have to be freaking out.”

“It’s only been a few minutes,”  Crowley said.

“Really?  Feels like a lot longer.”   When they knocked on Kyra’s door, there was a stiff silence for a few moments and then it opened.  Rafael stood there, looking from Bobby to Crowley like a concierge deciding whether to permit the intrusion, then stepped back to let them enter.  Kyra sat on her bed, hugging her knees.  Bobby sighed.  “How much did you two hear?”  he asked.

“Not whatever happened in the circle,”  Rafael said.  “The silence held.  But just now….”  He looked at Crowley.  “We couldn’t hear all of it but what we did hear  - what does it mean, that you are cut off from Hell?   What are you, Mr Crowley?”

“Go on,”  Bobby said, when Crowley flicked a glance his way.  “I’m not gonna try to field that one.”

“I’m a demon,”  Crowley said bluntly. 

Rafael shot a betrayed sort of look at Kyra.  “You said he was Mr Singer’s boyfriend.”

“I am,”  Crowley sighed.  “I’m also the King of Hell – or I was.  My position there is a tad edgy right now, for reasons a smart boy like you can probably work out.  I am not Lucifer’s favourite demon, let’s say, which I’m quite pleased about.  Nor am I currently a threat to anybody in this room, unlike Lucifer.”  He let that sink in for a moment, glanced at Bobby, judging that the hunter was going to let him run this for the time being.  “We need you to guide us to where the witches are, Rafael – and why your mother named you for the biggest dick of an archangel I ever met, I have _no_ clue – but to do that, you have apparently got to be an initiated witch.  We have the books with the ritual in them and while none of the humans here is one of your people, they have had some practice in the field.  So the big question is this:  Will you accept initiation from us – one of us – in hopes it _may_ trigger Lucifer’s geas and enable us to find where the witches are?”

Rafael stared at Crowley so intensely that even the demon began to look uncomfortable.  “A _demon_ ,”  he said, no question in his voice.  Bobby recognised the tone;  the kid was turning the concept around in his head.   “You are the king of the demons. You serve Lucifer…”

“I bleeding well don’t,”  Crowley snapped.

“Ease up, Crowley,”  Bobby said.

“We dedicate ourselves to the service of the Morning Star,”  Rafael went on as though he hadn’t heard either of them.  “He grants his power to our, uh….”  

“Rituals and endeavours,”  Crowley said.

“…rituals and endeavours and in turn, we make ourselves available to his, uh, desires and exercise of power.”  Rafael shook his head, out of the reciting fugue.   “But it’s supposed to be a woman who initiates a male, same as it’s a man who initiates a female acolyte.”

“I’m pansexual; that should cover that problem,”  Crowley muttered, then aside to Bobby,  “Look, I could just go borrow another meatsuit.  That young sweetbutt at the Sons’ Clubhouse…”

“No way!”  Bobby growled at him.

“What are you talking about?”  Rafael asked.  Bobby put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder and hustled him out of earshot, which he decided meant leaving the house.  The afternoon was warm and seemed normal summer, if you counted the odd silence due to lack of traffic of any kind.

“It’s really not a problem,”  the demon shrugged.  “You tell Rafael we know someone else that’s au fait with the rituals and you’ll go sort things out with her.  I come back with the new meatsuit, we do the ritual, you and the boys start tracking the new witch, I skip back to this suit and the other suit’s got no idea why she’s now standing out the front of the clubhouse.”

“You really don’t get why that would bother me, do you?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow, studying the furious hunter standing before him.  He felt his cock twitch hopefully at the sight; the muscles in Bobby’s bare arms and broad chest standing out as he gripped Crowley’s shoulders.  He was wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, so there was plenty to see.  Unfortunately, considering their audience back in the house, there was no chance Bobby would throw him to the ground and ravish him.  He supposed, considering how into his current meatsuit Bobby was, he didn’t exactly like the idea of Crowley ‘being someone else,’ even if it was strictly temporary.  But even so, it was going to move things along, wasn’t it?

“No, you don’t,”  the hunter muttered.  “But I don’t see another way.  I’ll talk to the kid.  You go back inside and tell the boys and Kyra something that’ll not set the lot of them on my throat.”

Rafael received the news rather doubtfully, as well he might, Bobby thought.  They hadn’t said anything about someone else who could help their team before now, though he covered by saying that she was “pretty well undercover, she’s with the Sons.”  It wasn’t the first time he’d had to use bullshit on the job, though he purely hated lying to the kid.  But explaining the ability of demons to smoke out of one human and take up residence in another would be worse. 

Bobby could see so many ways this could go really badly.  Including that they didn’t know the next step;  how they could whack Lucifer even if they did find him and his local congregation.  But hey, how was that different from the way they’d always done the job?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the bits and pieces about the ritual are drawn from Wiccan practice, but have been altered to fit the needs of the story and the Supernatural canonverse. Don't try this at home!


	14. Down the Rabbit Hole

“She’s a solitary witch _and_ she gives it up for the Sons?”  Sam summarised doubtfully, after Bobby’s awkward agreement with Crowley’s story.  “So why hasn’t she been swept up with the rest of ‘em?”

“She’s purely Wiccan,”  Crowley said smoothly.  “Into herbals and candles, no deals with the devil in the mix.  As a result, she’s about as powerful as a white mouse on steroids and no use to Lucifer.  But fully able to initiate somebody into, ah, witchdom if she uses the rituals in Rafael’s group’s books.  Which we have.”

“Well, go and talk her into it,”  Dean said.  He looked across the living room to Rafael, uncomfortably squeezed into an armchair with Kyra.  “So, kid, feel like becoming a man?”

*

To find their subject, or indeed, any of the girls who were the motorcycle club groupies, Bobby and Crowley had to get into the club.  That wasn’t all that difficult.  They were greeted by a group of bikers on their way in from a hunting trip, who proudly displayed an impressive deer carcass and asked Bobby if he knew anything about “cooking up something _this_ size?”  When Bobby unguardedly admitted he’d prepared one or two in his time, he was hustled through into the kitchen to “educate” the Prospect biker who was doing the cooking. 

“You got to hang it,”  Bobby complained.  “You shouldn’t cut it up right away!”

“We don’t have anything else that’ll feed everyone.”  That was Jax himself, materialising at Bobby’s shoulder.  He motioned towards the clubroom, which Bobby had seen was crowded on his way through.  “Half of them aren’t club, they’re just from the town.”  He shrugged.  “What could we do?”

“You’re kinda a softie, aren’t you?”  Bobby accused, grinning.

“If you weren’t an old man, I’d flatten you for that.”

Crowley had disappeared somewhere;  probably on the track of the girl he had spoken to before.  Bobby tried to ignore that.  He turned back to the hapless young man tasked with deer cookery.  “Okay, okay, but we’re gonna need a tarp for that table and some bigger knives than what I see.  Get everybody out of here that doesn’t want to get splattered with innards.  You gonna put this on your barbecue spit?”

“Too big,” said the cook.

“Okay, we’ll cut it down…”

“It took the guys two days to get this,”  Jax said, some time later when Bobby took a breather.  The cook and another couple of helpers were taking some of the bloody chunks out to the barbecue.  “They were out in the woods the whole time;  said they saw a frigging wolf pack, like twenty strong, out tryin’ for the same thing.  There aren’t any wolves in California!”

“Well, last I looked there weren’t a lot of things that are here now.”

“True enough.  These wolves didn’t run like they usually do – well, so I’m told - they tried to take the guys on, until they wasted a shitload of ammo on them.  Mostly missing.”

“Could have been werewolves,”  Bobby said.

“You joking?”

“No.”

“I guess you didn’t drop by to be our chef, but thanks.  Ron’s not a lot of use, but Amelia’s off sick;  she’s the one with the dad used to take her hunting as a kid in Minnesota and she can do one mean venison stew.”

“Eat out of cans next time till she’s better.”

“We’re running out of those faster than I’d like.  I never thought I’d say this, but I wish the damn National Guard would show up, or somebody to sort this shit out.”  Someone called Jax’s name and he sighed heavily.  “Anyway, thanks again, man.  Stay for dinner.  It’s the least we can do.  Did you want to see me about something, by the way?”

“Just checking in,”  Bobby said.  “We’ve been patrolling around the area.  It seemed pretty quiet and that always bothers me.  Look, that deer’s gonna take a couple of hours to be ready and I have to get back, but if your gratitude stretches to a few stray cans of beer, that’d be good.”

“You got it.”  Jax called out to someone.  “Hey, Alice, grab some beer for the man.  He’s saved our dinner.”

Someone touched Bobby’s arm a few moments later and he turned, seeing a pretty blond girl in her twenties, her arms around a small box of beer cans.  He couldn’t remember her – the sweetbutts seemed all very similar to him – but she smiled as though she recognised him.  “I’ll carry these out to the car for you.”

“You don’t have to…”  Bobby began and then he realised.  He wasn’t sure what had tipped him off; not the voice or even the body language.  Probably that damn familiar smirk on her lips.  He felt a coldness in him, but he managed to walk normally out of the clubhouse, fielding greetings from some of the bikers, calls to stay around.  When he reached the Mercedes, he saw a black-clad figure inside, lying along the back seat, looking dead asleep.  Or just dead, Bobby thought with a chill.  He opened the driver’s door, movements mechanical, and took the box from the girl.  The _vessel_ now.  He made a grunt of surprise as she pushed forward into his arms, her own going around his neck while she kissed him.

“Way to go, Bobby!” Tig called behind him.  “Hey, Jax says if you want, Alice can go back with you – she’s always up for a threeway and she’s been talking about you guys nonstop.”

Bobby waved, since his mouth was otherwise occupied, and took several moments to detach “Alice” from him in order to get into the car.  Tig roared with laughter as she scrambled over him, giggling, to reach the front passenger seat, keeping as much contact as she could.   He felt his face heat up as he turned to glare.

“Smile, darling, Tig’s still watching,”  she teased. 

Bobby put the car into gear.  He stared straight ahead the whole way back.  Once home, he kept staring away from her as he cleared his throat.  “Okay.  Don’t give ‘em any hints that it’s you.  You’re a Wiccan girl who’s somehow got the hots for a bunch of outlaw bikers.  That’s it.  Jax wants you to help us and you want to help us.  Don’t come on to me, don’t look at me unless you gotta.”

“Then you’d better be a bit nicer to me, hadn’t you?”  The voice had all of Crowley’s sulkiness when he was balked.  “Or your boys and the kids are going to wonder why you’ve got such a hate on for little Alice here?  What on earth is wrong with you, darling?”

“Just let’s get this done.”

*

Kyra lay on her stomach, leaning over the edge of her bed to talk to Rafael, who was sitting on the floor, and not doing a lot of talking back.  Five minutes before, Sam had knocked quietly and stuck his head in to be sure they were okay.  She guessed it was fair enough they were concerned.  The moment Bobby and Crowley were out the door, she had grabbed Rafael’s hand and tugged him in there, banging the door shut behind them.  Now she wasn’t too sure what came next.

“This isn’t right,”  Rafael said.   He was silent a long time, then said it again.  “It was supposed to be with my family.  That’s the way we’ve always done it.  A son is initiated by his mother, a daughter by her father.”  Kyra nodded.  She could hear the way his voice changed when he said the last words, like he was quoting somebody.  “Even if this is a witch, she’s – she’s not one of us.”

“Does it matter?”  Kyra asked.  “Bobby thinks it doesn’t.”

“I don’t think he’s sure.  I think those other two want to try it just in case it works.  But that means it’s just words and it shouldn’t be.”

Kyra, who had hosted Lucifer, couldn’t think of anything to say to this.  “I’m scared it’ll hurt you,”  she said.  “I mean, you know that being initiated made your mom and auntie and the rest just go and do what Lucifer said.  And he doesn’t want good stuff.”

“How do you know?”  Rafael asked bitterly.  Kyra said nothing and a second later memory flooded back and he said.  “Sorry.” 

“S’okay.  Rafael?”

“What?”

“I was just wondering.  Do your mom and aunt and other people use spells around you, like from when you were little?”

“Sure.  Being witches, that’s just what we were.  It wasn’t a secret if you were in the family.”

“So if you got lost somewhere and they wanted to find you, did they use magic?”

He smiled, only briefly but it was there.  “All the time when I was a little kid.  They taught me this dumb finding cantrip so I could find my way back to them if I got lost.”  He stopped suddenly and stared up at her.  “You’re a genius,”  he said softly.  “’Course, it’s a lot further that they’ve gone, even if it works, it will be really weak.”

“We could go,”  Kyra blurted.  “You and me, before Bobby and Crowley get back with this witch lady.   We’ve got a few hours before it gets dark.  Once we know where your family and the rest are, we can come back and tell them!”

“It can’t be that far,”  Rafael said with fierce hope. “They didn’t even take the car, they just went on foot.”

Once decided, they wanted it to happen at once.  Kyra said they had to wait until one of the Winchesters checked on them, because that would give them the longest time.  She and Rafael did put their shoes on.  “We could, you know, tell Sam and Dean,”  she suggested halfheartedly, but Rafael shook his head.  He could not have specified the source of his distrust, but he hadn’t liked Dean’s joke or the way both the brothers regarded the whole matter as just another thing they could try.  Since Kyra hadn’t liked it much either, she didn’t push the point any more.

An agonising time later, Dean opened the door, not knocking, and peered at them, apparently playing cards, both sitting crosslegged on the floor.  “They’re not back yet,”  he said.  “Do you guys want something to eat?”  Both shook their heads, looking at their game rather than him.  “Okay, see you in a bit.”

*

When the front door finally opened, Bobby strode through, followed by a full figured, blond young woman in a bright patterned, skimpy dress.  “Where’s Crowley?”  Dean demanded.

“Back at the clubhouse,”  Bobby said shortly.  “This is Alice, who’s gonna help us with things.”  The attractive girl smirked at them;  at least, Dean would have called it a smirk and even Sam seemed taken aback.  Considering the whole situation, it didn’t seem right to have somebody grinning cheerfully at them all.  Bobby looked at the girl and her grin faded.

“I’m glad to help you, boys,”  she said.

“Don’t we need Crowley for the ritual?”  Dean demanded, reluctantly looking away from Alice.

“He thinks it might screw it up if he’s present, the whole demon thing,”  Bobby mumbled.  Sam nodded and after a moment, so did Dean.  “Alice reckons she knows what to do, but we’ll go over the script first.  Where are the kids?”

“Kyra’s room.  They’re not real happy,”  Sam said.

“I don’t blame them,”  Bobby said.  “No, I’ll go get them, I want to chat to them a bit more anyway.”  He knocked on Kyra’s door.  “It’s Bobby, sweetheart,”  he said and waited only a moment before opening it.  He was worried about leaving Crowley/Alice alone with the Winchesters for too long, and that concern overrode his innate consideration.  He stared at the empty room as though expecting the kids to emerge from thin air, then took a couple of long strides to the window and looked out, with a soft, muttered curse.  “Birds have flown,”  he called out loudly, and within moments Sam, Dean and Alice were crowding Kyra’s room.  “Didn’t you morons even check on them?”

“Twice,”  Sam retorted.  “I did and Dean did, only fifteen minutes ago.  We’ll go drive around and find them.  You and Alice wait here.”

Bobby stood still in the front doorway until he heard the doors of the Impala slam shut, then turned to look at Crowley in his Alice meatsuit, standing still in the centre of the room.  “Alice” smirked at him briefly, and traced a hand down over the front of her top.  “Nice rack, isn’t it?  Sure you don’t want to take a few minutes, darling, now we’re all alone?”

Bobby stared.  “With the kids gods know where on the streets, you want to fool around?”

“I thought you might like a bit of variety.”

“It’s not in any way the goddamned time!”

His anger seemed to get through to the demon then.  At least he shrugged and stopped his flirting, starting to put his hands in nonexistent coat pockets before remembering he was wearing a flimsy sun-dress and then pretending an immense interest in the room furnishings.  “You were interested enough last night _and_ this morning, Robert.  Very much so;  I’m still sore.   I thought you’d moved on from the vanilla, but I suppose I have to remember your limitations.”

Bobby glared at him.  “I’m not even gonna ask how you got Alice in the back of the Merc.”

“Jealous too.”

“Go screw yourself,”  the hunter said wearily.  He left Crowley in Kyra’s room and went to the kitchen, where he opened one of the beers he’d brought back.  He should probably eat something, he thought, it had been a long time since breakfast, but he still wasn’t hungry.  And beer was food, kinda.  Where the hell was she?  He itched to be out and searching, but if “Alice” had been what she was purported to be, he wouldn’t have left her, a young woman, alone here.  Damn Rafael’s stupid – no, those rules weren’t stupid, he told himself.  They mattered to the boy and his clan and if they weren’t followed, that initiation wouldn’t stick, because Rafael wouldn’t believe it was genuine.

He checked the items for the ritual which Crowley had set out on the small table he was using as an altar in the spare room.  Everything present and accounted for, of course;  Crowley did not make that kind of mistake.  Bobby sighed and turned to go out, then stopped as he realised that “Alice” was in the doorway.  Had this been Crowley as he usually was – Bobby’s mind struggled for language to encompass what for a human was impossible – the hunter knew he would have touched him, probably kissed him, maybe more;  it was damn hard to keep his hands off Crowley these days, he admitted.  But when Crowley took the form of this attractive young woman, smiling and presenting herself to him, there was just nothing.

“I think Alice should go back to the clubhouse,”  the demon said in the girl’s soft voice.  “Whatever else it means;  the fact of Rafael and Kyra leaving is a clear vote against, I would say, and an unwilling initiation doesn’t work any more than one with the wrong person doing the ritual.”

“I know.”  Mild surprise that Crowley had mirrored his earlier thoughts, but not too much.  They knew each other pretty well now.  His anger began to ease a little, but he was still watchful.  “Also the boys would have found ‘em by now if they’d been close by, just walkin’ along the street, so that means they’re hiding.  Kids know more hiding places than a field mouse and Rafael knows this town.”  He sighed.  “Okay, c’mon.”

“Just kiss me.”

“Crowley!”

“Just once.  I’d like to know how it feels from here.”

“You’re freaking twisted.”

“Demon…”

“I know, damn you.”  Crowley/Alice grinned at that and Bobby muttered.  He stepped forward and bent his head – the girl was shorter than Crowley, only about five five – and kissed her soft lips, still feeling like he was doing it without consent, since Alice herself had not asked him.  Was she aware of what he was doing, he thought, suddenly jolted.  Her being, her self, certainly was still within, but he very much did not want to ask Crowley that question.  Quickly, he stepped back.  Crowley smiled.

*

They drove close to the clubhouse, but keeping far enough away for the foot traffic not to note the car.  Alice got out alone and walked along the street towards the high wall and the gates.  As Bobby watched, the girl staggered and cried out in confusion, and then even though he’d known it would happen, Bobby jumped violently as he heard Crowley sit up in the car behind him, coughing, then fumble at the handle to get out.  “Where the fuck are you going now?”

“Need to patch Alice’s memory a little, don’t we?”  Crowley said, and walked towards the girl.  Again Bobby watched, seeing Alice turn towards the demon in hopeful confusion.  He was at least known by sight to her.  When Crowley turned back, Alice was already heading into the yard, all perky enthusiasm.  Bobby barely waited for Crowley to get in before putting the car in gear and turning about to head home.  “I left her a memory of some quick fun and games with both of us, so keep that in mind, love,”  Crowley said.  “She believes we had to break things off because our kids went missing.”

“We better hope nobody says anythin’ to her about being a high priestess of the Wicca or she might get a bit confused,”  Bobby growled.  “Now, if you got any of your other powers workin’, because you haven’t been real clear about that, put them to work, thanks.  It’s not exactly safe out here, remember, even before dark.”

“Hard to forget,”  Crowley said, a snap in his voice.  “You’d better let me out here then.”

“What?  Why?”

“It’s better if I hunt on my own.”

Not sure why, Bobby knew he didn’t like the sound of that, but with the two of them as pissed off with each other as they were, perhaps it was a better idea to search separately.  He pulled in to the kerb and waited silently as the demon got out, realising belatedly that Crowley hadn’t been doing any of his damn teleporting of late, not even across a room or in and out of a vehicle, like this.  “I’ll check Rafael’s house,”  he said at last.  Crowley nodded and moved away.

*

The rest of the night was a blur of fear and fatigue.  Bobby talked to Sam and Dean, coordinating their search around and through Charming.  The boys surprised a ghoul nest busy adding to their larder, and Bobby skewered a solitary vampire outside the town hall.  All of them found bodies, residue of the previous week’s chaos and lawlessness, but no one found Kyra and Rafael.  Crowley did not answer his cell, but Bobby was sure he would have called in had he found the kids.

The hunter was nearly dead from fatigue when he arrived at Teller Morrow.  Not expecting his quarry to be there;  he knew someone would have called him, but just the basic instinct telling him he was too weary to be on his own tonight.  He parked anyhow and sprawled over the wheel, nearly asleep, when someone rapped urgently on his window.  Bobby made two tries to get the door open and slumped back, looking at Jax.

“Bobby, I found this book in Gemma’s room….what the fuck is the matter with you?”

“Kids are missing,”  Bobby croaked.

“Oh shit.  Tig, somebody, come help here!”

Bobby found himself surrounded by outlaw bikers all attempting to help him into the clubhouse.  They deposited him in a chair and somebody brought a beer; the Sons’ inevitable fixer to any situation that didn’t require a gun.  “Get Tara,”  Jax ordered, but Bobby managed to say he was okay.

“I’m just tired,”  he said, not entirely truthfully.  Stress had a lot to do with it too.  “We’ve been searching all night, pretty much since I went home earlier…”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”  Jax demanded.  “I’ll send some guys out now;  we probably know more places to look than you.  You know why they took off?”

“Lookin’ for the witches.  Rafe’s mother, she left him a message…”

“Yeah.”  The blond biker dropped into the next chair and held out the book he had been carrying under his arm, a leatherbound tome that smelt of undetermined herbals, dust and faintly of sulphur.  Bobby looked at it, not entirely surprised.  “I found this in Gemma’s room.”

“Book of Shadows?”  Bobby asked and Jax shrugged.

“I guess so.  I can’t make much sense of it but there’s weird remedies in there, only Tara can’t work it out either.”

“Spells.”

“Gemma might be kind of a bitch,”  admitted Gemma’s son, “but we didn’t know she was into this crap.”

“She probably got compelled to go, same as Rafael’s family.”

“If the kid’s a witch, did he…”

“No.  He’s not initiated – not made part of the coven.  He’s got to be somewhere in the town, with Kyra.”

“We’re going with you,”  Jax said, “when we work out where the fuck it is we need to go.  Not even the fucking devil is going to mess with us.”

“I hope not,”  Bobby Singer said.  “Crowley is hunting on his own.  If anyone can find the kids, he can, and then we’ll leave.”

“Why’s he so frigging special?”  Jax asked curiously.  His blue gaze was disturbingly intent on Bobby’s face.  “I’m not messing you around, I know you guys are into this magic deal, but the way you talk, he’s like some kinda Terminator or something.  You’re not even worried that he’s on his own and he’s not armed, is he?  You said you just got that shotgun.”

_He’s the King of Hell._

“Okay.  I see you’re not gonna tell me,”  the biker said, not seeming concerned.  “I’ll get you drunk when this is all over and then see what you say, Singer.  Now c’mon, let’s find you a bed.  Some of the guys will be out looking, don’t worry, and we’ll wake you when we find your kids.  You’re no use to anybody like you are right now.  Come on, out of that chair.”

*

Kyra followed Rafael up the stairs above the classrooms to a level of the school she hadn’t known was there.  “Basically attics,”  Rafael said as he climbed.  “They shove all the stuff here they don’t know what to do with.  Nobody’s gonna think to look for us here and by the time we do, I’ll have triggered that cantrip and we’ll be on our way.”  He led the way into a room crammed with school desks, one atop another, and found a space in the centre just large enough for them to sit crosslegged on the floorboards.  Then he took a velvet bag out of his pants pocket and began to take out the contents and place them on the floor.

“Ten minutes and we’ll be gone.”

*

The looter, and resident of Charming – Crowley supposed – didn’t have time to know what hit him.  The demon had got close behind him, following him into the damaged and abandoned house, before the man even stopped and began to turn around.  An arm around his throat and a quick, expert slash with the black dagger he carried was all it took.  Long practice enabled Crowley to dodge the burst of blood from the man’s carotid, speaking the Enochian words with care, feeling them strike reality and twist it, corralling the departing soul and allowing the spell to feed upon it.  Crowley smiled as he felt the energy rise within him, that true self which mortals saw only as a red wisp of smoke.

“Kyra,”  he said.  “Where are you?”

*

“That’s a rabbit’s foot key chain,”  Kyra said slowly, watching Rafael pick it up and dangle it from his hand.  He passed it quickly through the candle flame rising thinly from the smallest candle she’d ever seen, no larger than a pencil, thrust into a plastic holder.  She heard enough of the words he muttered to know they weren’t English, but that was it.  Uncomfortably she sat back against a tower of the desks, aware of the eerie silence of the night around them.

Then the rabbit’s foot jumped, though Rafael hadn’t moved his hand.  She let out a slight squeak, then made herself stop.  The rabbit’s foot moved up and out until it tugged on the chain.  “That’s the direction,”  Rafael said softly.  “Let’s get outside.  I think that’s east but I’ll know for sure from outside.”

“Well, if you went much further west you’d be swimming,”  Kyra pointed out, but she was glad to be leaving, even if it took them out into a night of monsters.  It felt like it took longer to leave the deserted school than it had to come into it which was crazy.  Rafael had had to use some other little spell to open two sets of locked doors, which made her wonder if he could do this stuff, what else would he be able to do when he actually joined the witch cult.  Much though she liked him, she wasn’t sure she liked _that._   She didn’t exactly have good memories about that sort of thing.   But that spellcasting had slowed them down on their way in.  Rafael had been adamant that this spell needed somewhere quiet, where they could be at least some sure that nothing would jump on them.

Once out the front of the school, they had a better idea of the direction, and could even determine which road would lead them towards whatever it was the rabbit’s foot wanted to find.  Presumably Rafael’s mom.  But as he admitted, the destination could be anywhere between five minutes walk and a couple of days.

“So they’re not any further than that?”  Kyra asked to be sure.

“No.  Probably a few hours drive!  We can go to my house and take the car.”

“You can drive?” 

“Sure – well, kinda.”  She kept looking at him and he shrugged.  “Mom’s let me try it out a few times in a car park when nobody was there, okay?”

“Nuh uh.  I’m not getting in any car you’re driving.”

The roar came from nowhere and everywhere, making both of them shriek and whirl around, still seeing nothing.  A wind sprang up, catching them and tossing them like toys, sending Rafael sprawling to the ground and Kyra grabbing at the branches of the nearby tree which caught her.  Her eyes stung, blinding her, and she screamed.  The air before her seemed to blur and change shape – it had to be her stupid eyes – but it looked like a tiny tornado was forming around where Rafael was struggling to get to his feet.  She pulled herself free of the tree branches and dropped a couple of feet to the ground.

The tornado circle swirled around Rafael with a roaring sound….and then he was gone.  Kyra wiped her eyes hard, tried to see him, he _had_ to be there.  He couldn’t have just fallen through a cyclone's eye as though it was Alice’s stupid rabbit hole!  But the road was empty now.  She heard just one final sound, that roar again, now distant – and triumphant.

She ran forward, awkward and half-balanced and jumped at nothing – _but I’m not landing on the road, I’m hanging in the air! –_ and then felt something knock hard into her and around her with desperate force, bringing her aside from the circle of wind.   She screamed and tried to pull free, flailing her arms and striking something – someone – solidly in the face.  Then she found that she couldn’t move her arms any more and collapsed to the gravel.

“You’re welcome, darling,”  Crowley said above her.  His voice was muffled and when she looked up, she saw that he was holding a black handkerchief to his nose.  He took it away after dabbing delicately at a minute amount of blood.

“Rafael!”

“I saw, love, and a second later, you would have been on the other side of that gate.”

“That’s what I wanted!”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then you can take us after him.”

“I don’t know where that gate opened up and I have a thing about jumping blind.  Also, it’s now closed and can’t be tracked.”  He held out his hand and when she didn’t respond, she found an invisible force gripping her, pulling her to her feet with no input necessary on her part.  “Can I let you go or will you start punching again?”

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t know it was you.”

“Not precisely what I asked, pet.”

“I won’t hit you.”

This time she took the offered hand.  They were instantly in the car park of Teller Morrow, standing in front of two stunned Prospects, set on watch by Jax.  A few minutes later, she’d been hustled inside and Bobby Singer, sleepy and stunned, was hugging her nearly hard enough to break ribs and promising her she was now grounded until the age of eighteen.  He included Crowley in the hug too and even he oofed when Bobby put both arms around him and gave him a proper ribcracker.  Then she was led off and given into the charge of Tara, Jax’s old lady, a term which puzzled Kyra since Tara _wasn’t_ old;  she hardly looked old enough to be a proper doctor.  Tara and some of the other women made her clean up and then put her to bed in a room with some of the other kids, all younger, even though she was desperate to talk to Bobby and Crowley about what had happened to Rafael.

“They’ll talk to you in the morning if they need to,”  Tara promised.  “Now, do I have to worry about you trying to run off?”

“No,”  Kyra said desolately.  What was the point?  She had no way of getting to wherever Rafael was, if he was even alive.  But Crowley had said “gate,” suggesting that he’d gone somewhere, he hadn’t just died.  She clung to that hope as she lay in the bunk bed.  At least Crowley had seen some of what had happened;  he would tell Bobby and then they _would_ talk to her.  She would make sure of it.

 


	15. Road Trip Apocalypse

“You’ve got blood on you,”  Bobby Singer said.  He reached out a big hand and touched Crowley’s tie and his shirt.  “Still damp.”

“Not mine, not Kyra’s,”  Crowley said, that suggestion of a snap still in his voice.  Bobby had looked at him intently, once he finished hugging him, and the scrutiny wasn’t entirely welcome, the demon found.  Even Bobby’s hand trailing down his chest, examining the bloodstain, wasn’t having the usual effect, perhaps because the hunter had no romantic intent at all, he merely wanted to know the extent of the stain.

“Didn’t think so.  There’s a powerful lot of it.”

_The bowl, when he raised it to drink.  He had forgotten to dodge anything then, absorbed in the hot fire of the blood, the energy of it, that trapped soul dissipating in the force of the dark spell.  The energy that still thrummed through him, through every cell of his meatsuit, awaking that familiar hunger and desire._

“You found her,”  Bobby said, still with that measuring note in his voice.  “But not Rafael.  She was sayin’ something got him, something that sounded like a portal opening, and you stopped her following.  How’d you do that?  Earlier you didn’t have the juice to teleport and then you do magic like that?”

Crowley backed a pace, sat down on the edge of the bed in the room Jax had put Bobby in.  Jax’s own room again, he thought.  Slowly he unfastened his tie, pulled it off, began on the shirt.  “Demon, remember,”  he said, but there was none of the half-teasing note in his voice that there’d been last time he had said that to Bobby.  “I do what I need to, to keep you safe, to keep Kyra safe because she’s yours – and I find I’ve become a tad fond myself – but beyond that, well, you perhaps don’t want to ask me, darling.”

“Yeah,”  Bobby muttered, defeated for the moment.  “I know I don’t, because I figure I already know what you been doing.”  He had been fully dressed when he stumbled out to meet them, sleeping in jeans and t-shirt, but now he undid his belt and got out of the jeans, kicking them out of the way, before he sat down on the bed next to Crowley.  “Just come to bed.”

“So you want me now, love?”

Bobby made an annoyed sweep with his hand, nearly hitting Crowley in the ribs.  “I think you know I want you, damnit.”  He reached out, tapped Crowley’s chest with his knuckles.  “You here, not you when you were in Alice.  You were, I don’t know, jes’ wearing her.  She wasn’t done with that body and – and she was there when you wanted me to kiss you.  That didn’t feel right to me.  Takin’ without asking.  But you asked me.”  He spoke slowly, wanting Crowley to understand, wanting to clear things up in his own mind.  “Being with you, touching you, that’s what I need now.  This.”  He opened his hand, stroked Crowley’s bare chest, over the tattoos which coiled brightly beneath, along his arms.  Curious and fascinated, the demon remained still, letting the man’s hand move on him.

Bobby’s hand slid down his body to his groin, touching him as though he needed to become reacquainted, letting his fingers intimately explore, while Crowley drew his breath in.  “This,”  the hunter’s soft growl made him shiver, as much as the touching, as he became hard under Bobby’s fingers.  He had forgotten Bobby’s other hand, which cupped his cheek now, stroking slowly in time, holding him as he leaned in to kiss Crowley deeply.  “Now, lemme remind you.”

When they were done, satiated and breathing hard, Bobby settled his arms around Crowley and fell asleep, a comforting warm bulk against him.  Crowley knew he should not have been comforted.  He knew the dangers boiling beyond the frail walls of this building, knew that this once-more mortal man beside him could not protect him, or any of them.  Yet Bobby Singer felt like the only possible refuge for the King of Hell this night.

He woke, still confined by Bobby’s muscular arms and not minding in the least, to find Tara in the room, announcing that somebody needed to get out here because Kyra was having a nightmare and no one could wake her up.  Bobby woke in a sort of heaving unrest, tangled around him, and planted a hand on Crowley’s back to heave himself up.  Crowley had to grab him and remind him that he was naked, while assuring the doctor that he had this, she could leave, thank you very much.  He used what remained of his current power level to summon his shirt and pants to him, the moment Tara was gone.  “Go on,”  Bobby muttered.  “I’ll follow.”

The clubhouse was mostly silent; with sleeping bodies everywhere possible, including the bar area, with only a couple of lanterns so that those on watch could see their path.  Crowley went straight to the room where Kyra was sleeping, or should have been sleeping.  There was a lantern in here too and several women trying to reassure the kids, who were all awake.  In her lower bunk, Kyra tossed about, her eyes seeming to be open.  She clearly wasn’t seeing anyone who was actually present, and she made a low, growling sort of sound which intrigued Crowley. 

“If you try to touch her, she’ll punch you,”  one of the women said.  Crowley ignored her and sat on Kyra’s bed, adroitly grasping her wrists before she could swing at him. 

“Where are you, sweetheart?”  he asked.

“He’s with them,”  Kyra said urgently, continuing a conversation of her dream.  “I can show you but we have to go now!”

“What’s goin’ on?”  Bobby asked from the doorway.

“Find Sam and Dean – are they here?  Where are her clothes?”  Kyra was wearing a nightdress several sizes too big, probably borrowed from one of the smaller sweetbutts.  Somebody thrust a pile of what he presumed were Kyra’s clothes at Crowley.   He took them, standing up and bringing Kyra with him.  “Come on, darling, you can get dressed in our room, let’s not disturb your bunkmates, that’s it…”

She had stopped the strange noise and seemed awake, but for the odd calm of her expression.  Crowley met Bobby’s eyes and shook his head.  He brought Kyra into their room and told the hunter to “Keep those people out before I have to damage them!”  Kyra dressed quickly, but like an automaton, not demanding that they look away, as she would normally do.  Familiar voices outside told the demon that the Winchesters had been rousted and were demanding to know what the hell was going on. 

“Aren’t you gonna wake her up properly?” Bobby asked uneasily from the doorway.

“We’ll lose whatever advantage this is if I do, darling.  Tell your boys we need the Impala, let’s go.”

Crowley put a hand carefully on Kyra’s shoulder to steer her along, not all that certain she could even see her surroundings.  They moved between a sleepy, curious crowd of people in the clubhouse’s bar area.  Jax came out of nowhere and walked along with them.  “Winchesters are outside,”  he said.  “A few of us are gonna ride with you.”

“I don’t even know where we’re going,”  Bobby said, nodding towards Kyra.  “She’s in some kind of trance – I think.”  He looked back at Jax, thinking of the godawful racket the Harleys made when they were revved, something the Sons’ president likely didn’t even think of any more.  It wasn’t like he could make the bikers stay behind, he thought, but he had to try.  “Look – I think it’ll work better if it’s just us in the one car, keepin’ things as quiet as we can while she follows whatever it is she’s following.”

“It’s not like you can call for help with the cell towers out,”  Jax said, dubious, but he made a hand gesture towards several of the bikers who were following them out.  They stopped, but Jax continued along with them.  Sam looked out of the shotgun seat, about to ask a question until he caught sight of the apparently-sleepwalking Kyra, being shepherded along by Crowley.  There were only a couple of torches being carried by people to provide light; otherwise the car lot was all dark shadows and low voices.  Bobby opened one of the rear doors and Crowley, murmuring quietly, got Kyra in and shut the door after himself.

“Don’t you even want supplies?”  Jax asked Bobby.

“Probably,”  the hunter agreed, “but I don’t think we have time for all that.  We’ll either be back soon, or not at all.”  Jax nodded.

“My mom,”  he said.

“I’ll help her if I can.”

“Thanks, man.”

Dean, uncharacteristically silent, turned the Impala and drove the angular black car out of Teller Morrow.  “Which way?” he asked at the gate. 

Crowley looked at Kyra, noted the intent direction of her gaze.  “Straight ahead,”  he said, and Dean did so.

The weirdest of all backseat driving situations, Bobby figured, but he felt an odd sense of rightness about all this.  As though it had always going to be down to the five of them, seeking the unknown as they tried to save the world.  Retirement from hunting, the ordinary life, that was never going to be their reward or their fate, not as long as the being called Lucifer was above ground.  Then he suddenly remembered something that should have been impossible to forget.

“Cas!”  he whispered, so loudly that Crowley reached over Kyra’s head to tap him warningly on the arm.  “Sorry.  But his damn vessel…”

“Is in the trunk,”  Sam murmured.

“Plenty of room in there,”  Crowley said approvingly.  “I should know.”

“You can revisit it any time you like,”  Sam muttered.

“Keep things nice, boys,”  Bobby warned.  “It’s goin’ to be a long time in this car and there’s a kid present.”  Part of him sighed inwardly as he considered these facts, but mostly he was intensely relieved that the true hunt was on at last.

*

They found a motel, twelve long painful hours later.  Kyra resisted when Bobby tried to help her out of the car, anxiously indicating the road and saying, “We have to keep going.”

“No, sweetheart, we have to rest,”  Bobby said two or three times before Kyra blinked and seemed to come back to herself, looking around at them all as though not sure how she had come to be here.  The evening was cooler than they’d been experiencing in Charming and overcast, though the skies were a weird burnt orange, as though there was a fire somewhere, though no one had smelled or seen any indications of one.  The sun was setting quickly and the area around them was devoid of any sign of life other than themselves.

Sam and Dean went into the motel’s office to see whether anyone was actually minding it.  They’d pay if there was; squat if there wasn’t, as Dean told the others over his shoulder.  Kyra walked around the car park to stretch her legs and Crowley took Bobby’s hand, glancing at him for a reaction.  He got it – Bobby pulled away, muttering “Better not.”

“I’m holding your hand, not jerking you off,”  Crowley said chidingly.  “What’s the matter?  Societal restrictions a bit tight, darling?”

“It’ll just set Sam and Dean off,”  Bobby muttered.  “And we’re supposed to be on a damn hunt.”

“If Lucifer or any witches show up, I promise I’ll stop,”  Crowley said.  He reached out again and gripped Bobby’s hand.  The hunter looked at him miserably, as the Winchesters emerged.  They saw the scenario, saw Bobby’s expression, his body language pulling away from Crowley, barely allowing the contact.  The hunter’s head turned and he regarded them stonily.

“Anyone there?”

“Yeah, an old lady,”  Sam said, recovering himself.  He shot his brother a warning look and Dean shrugged.

“She said she’s waiting for her daughter and son-in-law to get back – they went looking for supplies in the bigger towns.  That was two days ago.  So we can have the rooms but no snacks.”  He threw a key towards Bobby, who let go of Crowley’s hand to catch it.  Kyra came jogging back and Dean tossed a second key to her.  “You get your own room, pick of the lot,”  he said.  Kyra managed a brief smile and pocketed the key.  “Of course, you can visit for movie night.”

“Is there power here?”  Bobby stirred himself to ask, glancing around.  The motel’s sign was dark and there were no lights visible, though night couldn’t be more than an hour away.

“Damn, I forgot.  We’ll tell you war stories.  All the times Sam Winchester fell over his own feet….”

Dean was making an effort, Bobby had to admit; this was the first time he’d seen the kid smile in days.  Dean could charm anyone when he tried, and he never had to try that hard.  He and Sam threw banter back and forth as they headed off, gathering Kyra along with them, and he wondered;  had they done that deliberately, included her so that he and Crowley could have some alone time? 

In their room, he closed the door with a faint click, feeling at once the relief of privacy.  “Hm, that was almost nice of Squirrel,”  he heard Crowley say, and turned to see him taking off his tie. 

“Yeah, so don’t get used to it,”  Bobby grumbled.  He sat down to take off his boots and sighed in relief, wishing he had clean socks.  Or a working shower.  Or an ice cold beer.  Any of those would do.  Well, he had a room and a comfortable bed and a horny male demon, sitting down beside him on the aforementioned bed, smirking hopefully in his direction  After all that time in the car, he was kinda hopeful himself.  “Where are the others’ rooms, you see?”

“Unfortunately we do share a wall,”  Crowley told him.

“Come on, place is empty and they have to be right there?  You sure?”

“It’s a good move, security-wise,”  Crowley said and Bobby scoffed.

“Like you care about security.”

“Safer for Kyra,”  Crowley added and Bobby nodded;  he’d accept that.  He continued undressing, aware of Crowley’s scrutiny as he got up to take off his trousers.  Doing anything now was stupid, he told himself.  They were all tired and needed rest and food. 

There was a knock on the door and Sam’s voice, “I’m doing a sweep.  Kyra’s had some of the rations and gone to bed, but she knows to bug Dean if she needs anything.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Seize the chance, darling,”  Crowley said when they heard Sam’s footsteps moving away, and Bobby turned to see him grinning teasingly, lying on the top of the bed in a pose of exaggerated coquetry.  “Or anything else that takes your fancy.”

Bobby groaned.  There was more than one reason for the groan.  He wondered whether the hassles he had with Crowley were because he was male and their dynamic was, had to be, different than it would be with a woman.  With Karen.  Or just because he was Crowley and didn’t care what anyone thought, no matter how it might embarrass Bobby.  Or, probably, he said and did stuff _because_ it would embarrass Bobby.  If he’d had experience in another same sex relationship, he might have more of a clue.  Hell, if he’d had experience in more than one of the other kind, it would’ve helped his comprehension!  He was never quite sure which of Crowley’s weird traits were due to demon and what simply due to general contrariness.

He wanted to just go ahead with Crowley now;  no doubt about that.  He’d once thought if he went ahead and gave way to these wrong desires – as he’d once thought of them – this fixation on Crowley would be over and he’d be sane again.  But that wasn’t the truth.  He loved Crowley and he wanted him physically, the whole male, demonic package.  That was the truth, the thing he couldn’t get away from, the truth that had triggered his expulsion from Heaven and left him confused and stumbling off the path.

“You love me?”  he blurted suddenly.

Crowley raised an eyebrow at him, curious but unbothered.  “I’d certainly like to if you’d come over here, darling.  You heard Sam; everything’s dealt with for the night, so there’s no earthly  - or unearthly – reason why not.”  Bobby sat down on the bed, stifling a yawn.  “Unless I’m boring you, of course.”

“Don’t be an idjit.” 

Crowley reached out a hand and Bobby found himself taking it, pressing it against his cheek.  He let Crowley pull him down to the bed and settle himself with his back to Bobby, who comfortably settled his arms around the demon.  “After this, if there is an after this, what do you want to do?”  the hunter found himself asking.  In answer, Crowley arched back against him and Bobby laughed, though he felt himself react to the press of Crowley’s excellent ass against his groin.  He stroked Crowley’s face, letting his fingers stray through the other’s beard. 

“Better enjoy what you can now,”  Crowley said.

“You think Lucifer will kill us?”

“I think he’ll swat us without even noticing, darling.”  Crowley’s voice was matter of fact, his eyes closed.  “I think he’s getting ready to reive Heaven.  The amount of power he can raise from hundreds of witches, especially if he’s not bothered whether they stay alive or not – and I can assure you he’s not – might be able to crack that one.  He’s not a complicated being, love.  He can wreck the world, well, he’s on the way to doing that.  Probably he’s broken Purgatory and let _those_ spirits out – did you never wonder where all these beasties plaguing us in Charming were coming from?  He’s always wanted to go back and sit on God’s throne.”

“I see that.”

“So, yes.” 

“Huh?”

“Focus, darling.  Yes, I love you.  I must do.  Here I am with you in severely substandard accommodation, your boys way too close by, on a road trip to almost certain annihilation and now...”  He chuckled wickedly, his keener hearing picking up what Bobby had so far missed.  Then there was a bump at the door, not quite a knock, and then Kyra’s voice:

“Uh, can I come in?”

“No,”  Bobby groaned.  “Ask Dean, whatever it is!”

“I don’t want to talk to Dean.”  A pause.  “I need to talk to Crowley.”

*

When Crowley emerged, he was fully dressed and knotting his tie as he walked.  Kyra had moved down the corridor and turned when she heard the door open.  “I want to go for a walk,”  she said.  “I’m sick of sitting around;  we’ve been in the car all day.”

She didn’t usually whine, Crowley thought.  “Then let’s take a turn around the scenic car park,”  he said.  He saw Sam’s large outline beside the road as they emerged from the motel door, hoping absently that the hunter wouldn’t make any mistakes on identifying monsters.  Kyra walked beside him, silent for a moment.

“You said I’d be old enough to make deals soon…”  She trailed off, remembering well enough what his stipulation had been, but embarrassed to say the words.

“I said,”  Crowley told her precisely, “that by the time you could, your mother’s soul would be at its destination, wherever that may be.”

“I know.  I’ve read up about Deal Magic.  I want to make a deal for Rafael.”

Crowley made a sudden, explosive noise and turned sharply towards her.  “No matter what’s in those books from the Men of Letters’ little collection, they obviously didn’t get to the heart of the matter,”  he snapped.  “We don’t even know whether Rafael’s beyond the veil or not, and even if he is, Deal Magic puts a bloody _use-by_ date on your soul, Kyra Janine Hannan.  In ten years time, hellhounds would come for you and drag it from your body, to Hell.  You’d be twenty three years old and it would not matter whether you’d married Rafael or could hardly remember who he was.  Your life would be over, your body would be bloody scraps of meat.  Do you understand me?”

“Crowley!”  Sam’s deep voice, concerned and warning.  “Why are you yelling at Kyra?”

Both Kyra and Crowley started and turned towards Sam in the same moment.  Both, Sam thought, looked guilty.  Then he saw that Crowley was shaking, his eyes flaring red.  “Get her out of here,”  he managed.  “Take her back to Bobby.  Please, Moose.”

It was that _please_ which got Sam, the clear desperation in Crowley’s face, though he couldn’t understand it.  “Okay,”  he said carefully.  “You stay on watch out here then.”  Crowley nodded in relief, turned away from them.  His hands were clenched into fists as he did so and Kyra stared at him, clearly rattled.  “Come on,”  Sam said.  He went in behind her, making sure she did go in, and knocked on Bobby’s door harder than he’d meant to.  When he opened it, Bobby looked a bit surprised to see him, but let Kyra get past him.

“What’s going on?”  he asked.  “Crowley all right?”

“I wouldn’t say so,”  Sam told him, “but you need to talk to Kyra and probably then Crowley.  I’ve got no idea;  they came out and walked and then out of nowhere, Crowley started yelling.  I don’t think I’ve seen him that riled up.  He said _please_ to me, Bobby.  As in please get her, Kyra, out of here.  I’ve left him on watch outside;  he looked like he needed some alone time.”

“So did I,”  Bobby muttered.  “Okay, Sam.  As you were, thanks.”  The door closed and he turned on his foster daughter in worried exasperation.  “You.  Talk.  What did you say to Crowley?”

“Why do you think it was me?”  Kyra managed.

Bobby bestowed one of his best glowers on her.  “Teach your grandfather, kid.  I know him.  He don’t lose it out of nowhere, he always has a reason.  Also you came and asked to talk to him, so now talk to me.  What’s goin’ on with you?”

“I got my period,”  Kyra blurted. “First time, just before we went to Rafael’s house.”

This did make Bobby pause, then he muttered and shrugged at her.  “Well, that explains some of the last few days, darlin’. You could have told me.  I was married to a lady for a long time, and that’s what it means;  you’re not a kid no more, you’re a young lady.  Nothing bad about it.  But why in the name of all that’s holy is that a thing now?”

“When my mom died I talked to Crowley,”  Kyra said, not looking at him.  “I wanted him to, you know, bring her back.  He said a child can’t make a deal, that you have to be, uh, an adult person…”

“I think I get it,”  Bobby sighed.  “I think he was feedin’ you a line, by the way, I never heard or read of a demon that refused a deal, even if it was from a child barely school age, so long as that child could say the words.  But _he_ was refusing a deal when he told you that, so what do I know.  But what were you thinking?  A deal with a demon destroys your life.  You never win.  If it gives you what you wanted, it takes it away within a few years and destroys you and also the other person, if what you asked involved someone else.  You asked him to help Rafael, didn’t you?”

She nodded.  “And he went crazy at me.  But not like he was mad at me.  And then he asked Sam to take me back to you.”

Bobby stepped forward and hugged her then, stroking her frizzy hair and muttering comforting nonsense.  Kyra said something else, muffled by his chest and he said, “Hmm?”

“He knew my middle name.”

“Huh.  I didn’t know you had one.  We signed you as plain Kyra Singer in that school.”

“I don’t like it,”  Kyra said, which Bobby supposed was reason enough.  “I never told anyone it when I came to you so how did he know?  He said it when he was yelling at me.”

“That’s what parents do, you know,”  Bobby chuckled, trying to hide his unease.  “They call it three-namin’ – if your mom yells all your names out in the street, you know you are in big trouble.”

Kyra moved back so she could look at him.  “Yeah,”  she agreed.  “I knew a boy called Elliott Maria Becker whose mom used to do that and I thought it was really mean.”

“It was.”  Bobby patted her shoulder.

“My mom never did that.”  Kyra sniffed.  “Why won’t Crowley help, Bobby?  Rafael helped us.”

“Crowley probably can’t, darlin’.  He’s cut off from base, he can’t do a lot of the stuff he could before.  And he can’t just look around and see where they’ve got Rafael, you know, he’d have to talk to folks.  Demon folks.  And they aren’t too happy with him right now.”   Bobby stifled a yawn.  “I need to go talk to him, so I need to park you with Dean.  Don’t fuss.  I can’t leave you on your own at the moment.  Dean’s okay.”

He guessed Kyra was still shaken, because she didn’t argue, just followed along when he knocked on Dean’s door and gave her a little push through it.  “She needs to stay with you for a bit, so get rid of the porn on the computer.”  Dean blinked in surprise, then nodded, closing his laptop.  Bobby retreated, rubbing his eyes.  He yawned for a few moments, promising his tired mind he was going to sleep real soon now, before going outside into the night air to find the King of Hell.

Bobby had wondered whether Crowley would just vanish;  he wasn’t one for staying around when there was conflict, after all.  But there he was, hands in his coat pockets, waiting for Bobby near to where the Impala was parked.  His fury had eased and he was quiet, simply watching the hunter as he stopped in front of him.  For a moment Bobby was wary, seeing the flicker of demon fire in Crowley’s eyes and he asked himself what he thought he was doing here.

“What’s up with you?”  he asked, wary to get close when Crowley was in a chancy mood.  “What’d she ask you?”

“To do my job,”  Crowley’s voice was a quiet rasp as he looked at Bobby, then glanced around the car park and beyond.  Only the motel had any lights at all; the other buildings beyond the road were dark.  “I was never actually moved on from Crossroads, you know;  the promotion was self-granted.  I’m still basically a Crossroads type demon, only with a lot more oomph.  I knew Kyra’s full name, it came to me the moment she asked, even though I refused to take the deal.”

“I know you got oomph,”  Bobby muttered and that got a brief, genuine grin. “Come here,”  he added gruffly and pulled Crowley into his arms.  He’d meant to tell him off straight up, remind him that he couldn’t shout at Kyra as he might an adult opponent, but the other seemed so desolate that he just couldn’t do it.  “That’s better,”  he murmured as Crowley pressed against him.  “I was wonderin’ if you were still a demon, with those changes you talked about, feelin’ sensitive to cold, gettin’ hungry for actual food and so on.  So you’re still kinda stuck inbetween?”

“I seem to be, love.”

Bobby kissed him, intending comfort, but Crowley responded in an intense way which was definitely firing Bobby up.  Conscious of the fact that Sam was still patrolling somewhere, he moved away after the kiss, keeping an arm around Crowley’s shoulders.  “All right.  C’mon back inside then.  I need to settle Kyra back in her room;  you can talk to her tomorrow.  I think you two need some time apart for now.”

“We don’t,”  Crowley hummed, sliding his arm around Bobby’s waist.

“I’m exhausted, Crowley.”

“I’m sure I can help with that.”

“Not out here, damn it, Sam could be watching.”  Crowley chuckled, low and wicked, but he wasn’t getting handsy, Bobby noted.  He seemed to need the contact, though, keeping the arm around Bobby’s waist.

“It’s all right, you know, Robert,”  Crowley said, quite calmly and evenly.  “To touch me.  To let me touch you.  It’s not actually demonic.”

“I know.  I’m just kinda old fashioned.  _And_ tired.”

He led Crowley inside, helped him off with his coat and left him to settle while he checked on everyone else.  Sam came inside and changed off with Dean, who would wake Bobby for his watch in a few hours time.  Crowley, by common consent, was regarded as a sort of extra guard, who would back up whoever else had the watch.  They would move on soon after dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive my ignorance of US geography. I'm mostly working from maps, though I have done a trip from Denver CO to Santa Fe, NM a couple of years ago. 
> 
> This is close to the end of this story/AU season, and as befits Supernatural, the ending will be a bit cliffhangerish. Trust me, I will have more. I just don't want this story to get so humungous nobody will read it. It's been very difficult writing these recent parts and they've taken quite a turn away from the settings of Fate, so they're going to be in a new story.


	16. Not Allowed To Have Nice Things

In the morning, Bobby went into the small bathroom and groaned about the water being cold when he tried the tap.  Crowley followed him and muttered some words and the water flowed steaming hot when Bobby turned the shower on.  “I love ya,”  the hunter said sincerely.  Crowley snickered and watched the play of water over his hunter’s muscled shoulders for a moment before stepping in after him.  They weren’t delayed all that much.

Sam, Dean and Kyra were leaning against the Impala when they emerged into a wintry-seeming morning.  It had been definitely summer-warm the previous day and even the night, Bobby thought, as he walked over, feeling definitely the subject of scrutiny.  “You took your time,”  Dean groused.  “How you could stand to stay under that fu – that freezing shower that long, I got no idea.”

“Shower was hot,”  Bobby said.

It didn’t take Dean long.  He glanced at Crowley’s smirk and then gave Kyra an indignant look when she giggled.  Despite the embarrassment, Bobby was glad to hear the sound.  “Well, geez.  You could’ve done it for our water too,”  Dean complained.

“Shall we get moving?”  Sam asked pointedly.  “Happy to drive if you don’t feel up to it, Dean.”

“Don’t you try it.  Are we driving anywhere in particular?”  Dean directed the question towards Kyra;  his manner definitely gentler when he did so.  She hesitated and shrugged a little.

“I don’t know.  When I got really tired yesterday, I sort of lost the – the string.  That I was holding on to in my mind, I mean.  And now I know it’s out there but I can’t grab on to it again.”

“But we’re closer?”  Sam asked and she nodded.  “Okay.  Then let us see what towns and whatever are around here.  I’m not even sure what state we’re in, come to that.”  He took out his phone from habit and grimaced when he saw that it was dead.  Reluctantly he held it out towards Crowley.  “Can you, uh….?”

Crowley’s expressive brows rose and he paused before shaking his head.  “I’m a demon, not a power point, Moose.  Fortunately some of us spent some time in the world before it all went digital, so…”  He made a show of turning to Bobby and putting his hand on the hunter’s shoulder.  “Did you happen to keep track of our movements at all, Robert?”

“Well, I noticed we spent a few hours driving through the desert,”  Bobby agreed solemnly.  “Little bit of sand called the Mojave.”

“Correct, love.  I also recall that shortly before dark, we passed by an insignificant place called Las Vegas…”

“We did not,”  Dean growled.  “Come on, even if all the punters had been wiped out, Vegas would still have its lights on.”  Nobody said anything.  He looked desperately at Sam.  “Come on, we didn’t drive straight past Vegas, did we?  You can’t miss it.  _I_ couldn’t miss it.”

“You were bitching about the no road lights,”  Sam told him.  “We didn’t go through the city.  I directed you along beside the railway;  wanted to see if there were any trains or anything happening at the station, but it was like a cemetery.  Vegas had gone dark.”

“Vegas,”  Dean repeated more softly.  “Shit.  So are we headed for the Grand Canyon at all?”

“I believe he’s got his bearings now,”  Crowley told Bobby, who rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, I guess.  Dean, we’re just past Grand Junction, Colorado, which also had its lights off, by the way.  Don’t know the name of this place;  looks like it’s only got this one street we’re on, but it’s not springin’ out at me as the base camp for the new apocalypse.  I think we should make for Denver, if we don’t get any other prompts, and take stock of things there, try to find some supplies.  Might be best to head for your bunker after all and make new plans there.”  He looked again to Kyra to see whether she showed any signs of returning to her trance state but she was only shivering.  What the hell was happening to the weather now?  Sure, they were now in elevated territory and soon would be climbing the mountain road into Denver, if the boys agreed to check that city, so Bobby supposed he could expect some lower temperatures, but part of him was still on alert, wondering whether Lucifer was skiving around nearby.

“Put a jacket on,”  he said to Kyra.

“I didn’t bring one,” she said. “I don’t think – I don’t really remember.”

“No,”  Bobby said, annoyed at himself.  It was all very well for the Winchesters to jump into their car and drive off;  they were always packed for the apocalypse anyway, but he should have known better.  He turned back towards the motel with thoughts of “borrowing” something warm for Kyra, when there was a movement at the edge of his vision.  He faced forward again, finding Crowley a pace closer to Kyra, fussily tucking a red cardigan around her shoulders.  It was way too big, but still better than anything he or one of the Winchesters could have handed over.  The sight made Bobby grin, despite everything.

“Everywhere’s gone dark,”  Dean said quietly, still clearly thinking of Las Vegas.

“No,”  Bobby said gently.  “We’re gonna find somewhere holding out.  If it’s not Denver, it’ll be Sioux Falls, or some town nobody’s ever heard of.”  He stood silently then, all out of pep talk, while he and the Winchesters looked at one another, wondering whether this was finally it.  What, after all, were they going to do if they found this huge gathering of witches which Lucifer had orchestrated?

 “Let’s get movin’,”  Bobby said, when no one spoke or moved in answer to his attempt at cheer.  “You pick it, Dean, nobody else has got any clues right now.”  Dean looked at him once more, at Crowley, then shrugged and headed for the driver’s seat.  Kyra dived for shotgun, but Sam, arriving after her, beamed at her, picked her up by the shoulders and carefully deposited her beside the nearest rear door, ignoring her squawks of protest.

“I want the window,” she told Bobby.

“You sit in the centre,”  Bobby told Crowley.  “It’ll be too cramped for me.”

“Then I have to see him smirking at me every time I look in the mirror,”  Dean groused.

“Am I the only adult here?”  Sam asked the heavens.  It took several more minutes for everyone to sort themselves out and then for Dean to start the Impala, which seemed reluctant to oblige.  Bobby leaned back on the seat rest, feeling as though they’d been travelling for hours already.  It had felt good, though, to laugh.  Dean put the car into gear and they were on their way.

Only a few hours later, making it around midday, Bobby looked out of the window and noted that the sun appeared to be setting.  They were in a farming area, with few trees in the fields either side of the road, so he had a good view of the apparent sunset.

“There an eclipse scheduled?”  he asked hopefully.

“What the fuck?”  Dean said almost at the same time, which Bobby took for a no.  Half an hour later, their surrounds were fully dark and showed no signs of changing back to actual day.  Dean, who had been taking a break from driving, made Sam change over with him and for once Bobby agreed.  Sam was a decent driver but Dean was something more, particularly with this car.

None of them could see much out of the windows, not even Sam and Dean in the front of the Impala.  Dean yelled to Sam, asking what road this was, where in hell they were, but Sam had no idea.  Nor did Bobby, who told Crowley his comment that he was sure they weren’t actually in hell yet was not helpful. [“Demon, remember?  I should know.”]

Kyra sat still on Crowley’s other side, paying no attention to the bickering.  She looked at the dark noonday around them, the rattling of the car as wind grew stronger around them.  Dean had slowed down a bit; despite all accounts, he didn’t actually have a death wish, or so he called back to them.  They went past a town sign and Bobby called, “What was that?  Couldn’t read it, go back a bit.”

A particularly powerful wind gust buffetted the car, so it was several moments later that Sam turned, telling Bobby no need, he’d seen the sign.  “So what town is it?’ Bobby demanded.

Sam hesitated before saying,“Winterridge.”

“That’s impossible;  even not bein’ that sure where we are, we have to be hundreds of miles from there.  We haven’t even got to Sioux Falls yet and we’re hardly gonna miss that even if we miss the state line.”

“Like we missed Las Vegas?”  Dean yelled.

“You missed Las Vegas, you mean,”  Sam said.

“It can’t be Winterridge,”  Bobby said to Crowley, almost pleading for argument.  The winds rose around them, too noisy for them to talk more and the Impala shuddered, as though suggesting it might take flight given a bit more encouragement.  Bobby, trying to see out of the side window, thought he saw things flying in that windy darkness,  though what they were he could not have said.  He rolled down the window a little to see better and received a waft of a stink so foul it nearly made him retch. 

“Shit, Bobby!”  Dean yelled, as the car jolted sideways.

“I’m not doin’ it,”  Bobby growled back at him, winding the window back up.  Then he blinked, unsure for a moment, then knew it for truth; that was sunlight, coming back into being as though they were emerging from a dark tunnel;  first tints of colour and then a blinding blaze of sunlight that had Sam and Dean swearing to such a degree that Bobby growled at them to mind the language.  But when he looked anxiously at Kyra, she was still looking out the window as though she hadn’t heard.

“Bobby,”  Sam said, suddenly quiet, and he looked ahead, still not quite believing, but there, downslope and surrounded by forest, was the town of Winterridge, just as he had last seen it.

Dean brought the car to a halt in the main street and they all looked around in stunned disbelief, because the town was intact.  No building damage, not even any debris in the street or damaged vehicles and certainly no bodies.  It was just a country town beginning to wake up for the day, and that was definitely, edgily wrong.

“You want to head for the cabin, Bobby?”  Dean asked.  Bobby considered quickly.  No telling whether it wouldn’t be darkness and storms and flying monsters again in moments, and the cabin wouldn’t in truth be any safer than any random place.  They were also out of supplies.

“No, let’s get to a motel,”  Bobby directed, when no one else seemed set to say anything.  “On the edge of town would be best.”  Crowley shifted restively but didn’t comment aloud, only watched the lightening day with grim resolve.   Dean turned the car into the parking lot of some place whose name Bobby didn’t even look at.  For several minutes after they stopped, nobody moved.  Then Bobby patted Crowley’s shoulder and climbed stiffly out, followed by the demon and Kyra.  Crowley strolled off a few paces and Kyra followed him.

He looked at her intently, then away to look at a couple of townsfolk across the road, walking along without appearing to notice the strangers.  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.  “I mean, what _else_?”

Crowley gave her a quick nod of approval. “I’m not sure yet.  But watch everything.  Tell me if anything seems wrong to you.  You spent more time here than any of us, you’ll pick up on things.”

Kyra nodded uncertainly.  “I don’t really get it,”  she admitted.  “ _Everything_ feels wrong here – like – like everyone’s pretending.  Something’s waiting for us.  Can’t you feel it?”

He nodded, then glanced quickly to see what was going on.  Sam and Dean appeared to be heading off to book rooms.  Bobby stood by the car, looking to him curiously, but staying put as Crowley shook his head.  Blood and sulphur; they _trusted_ him!  It gave him a strange jolting sensation in his chest, reminding him of those moments of sharp happiness when he and Bobby were together in bed and he could almost forget … what he was and what he was not.  Now Bobby waited for him and Kyra was watching his face, intent on what he would say.  “Just watch everything,”  he told her.  “Don’t go away from us at all.  And pretend.”

Bobby was wary, he could see it and sense it, but the older hunter didn’t say anything until the Winchesters came back with keys and room numbers.  “Not putting you on your own,”  he said to Kyra.  “You’re going to bunk with me and Crowley.”

“If you want to, you know, do it, I’ll go and talk about hunting with Sam and Dean,”  Kyra offered.

Bobby winced.  “You shouldn’t even be thinkin’ about that, darlin’ but, ah, thank you for the offer.”

“We accept!”  Crowley said behind her and Bobby groaned.

The rooms were adjoining and Crowley, glancing about, thought the rest of the motel was actually empty, despite the bright lights out front and the clean, scrubbed look of the place. 

“I’m starved,”  Dean announced.  “Saw a diner just back that way; let’s go get something.”

“You go and get something for the rest of us, you and Sam,”  Crowley said.  Dean glared at him and then happened to glance at Kyra beside the demon.  She was holding Crowley’s hand and looking scared enough to disappear into the ground.  That made Dean choke back whatever he would have told Crowley he could do with his demon-kingly orders and mutter something to Sam.  The two of them strode off and Bobby got the door of their room open and ushered the others inside.

Bobby hardly spared a glance for the room;  the usual dull furnishings, this time in brown and yellow, containing two double beds and a single.  He dropped his duffel bag on one of the beds and began sorting out what he needed for a warding, while Kyra immediately ran for the bathroom.  They heard the shower start moments later.

“I don’t think that will help,”  Crowley said softly, watching Bobby move around to ward the exits.

“Better’n nothing.  Or don’t you want to be inside a salt circle?”

“Not hugely, since you mention it, love, but I’d put up with the itching in highly personal areas if it solved any kind of problem.  We’re beyond such things being of much, or any assistance to us right now.”

“Well, I’m gonna think about that when we’ve had some rest and a chance to talk to some of the people here.”

“Be careful what you ask them.”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna start asking why their town isn’t touched and nobody’s even scratched – well, the ones we’ve seen so far are fine - when everywhere else we’ve seen has blood and bodies in the streets,”  Bobby complained.  “I’ve got some finesse, Crowley.  But we have to start asking some questions or what’s the point of coming here?”

“Don’t know yet, love.  But we were brought here, and that doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Nor me,”  Bobby said, “but we don’t know that for sure yet.  Maybe this town was just lucky.  Stands to reason some places had to be.  We can take a quick break, recharge, decide what we do from here.”  He sighed, seeing Crowley’s answering expression.  “I’m not bein’ Pollyanna, Crowley, I just hope, all right.  Even if your place has that goddamned sign over it.”

“What sign?  Oh – all hope abandon?  Dante’s propaganda, love.”

He was surprised, always surprised, when Bobby’s arms went around him, gathering him in against his body while the hunter kissed his forehead.   Sex he knew,  sex was easy,  but tenderness had been almost alien, until Bobby. “Hope’s what demons are never allowed to have,”  Crowley murmured against Bobby’s neck, eyes closed.  He didn’t move when they heard the Winchesters returning, settling themselves on the beds and setting out containers of breakfast.  Only when Bobby reluctantly moved, giving him a final quick kiss on the cheek, did Crowley untangle himself from the hunter and go to sit on the bed where Sam and Dean weren’t.  Bobby was about to follow, then sighed and went over to the bathroom to knock on the door.  “Food’s here, darlin’,”  he called out.  “Better come and get it before it’s cold;  that never improves diner food.”

“This one was full of customers,”  Dean said, shaking his head in disbelief.  “They kinda looked at us, because we’re strangers, but I swear that was all.  And they were just talking about ordinary stuff, nothing about power failures or weird weather or monsters.”

“Maybe that’s because we’re strangers and they think we might be the monsters,”  Sam suggested.

“Good point.”

Bobby came back and opened the container Crowley handed him.  “Burgers?  This is breakfast!”

“So it’s a breakfast burger.  We haven’t had anything to eat all night.”

“We got a kid-sized one for Kyra.  Better call her again, Bobby, before Dean eats it as well as his.”

“Kyra!”  The shower still ran but there was no answering voice.  Bobby suddenly didn’t like the feeling he had.  He went over and tried the door but of course she’d locked it.  “C’mon, open up, it’s no time for playing around.  I promise you I won’t look at anything.”

“Break it,”  Crowley said suddenly.  He walked up beside Bobby and flicked a hand at the door.  A tiny tongue of flame came into being but disappeared without affecting the wooden door.  Sam hurried up beside them and aimed a large booted foot at the door, delivering a kick so powerful that the door burst open at once.  Bobby almost fell into the steaming bathroom and stared disbelieving at the empty room, with the unoccupied running shower.  He took three steps to the opposite wall and struck his fist into the closed window.  It shuddered but did not break, though blood streamed from his knuckles. 

“It’s still locked,”  he said very quietly, a dreadful tension knotting his gut.  He turned about, noting the towel dropped to the ground and the small bag of clean clothes they’d scrounged for Kyra along the way.  Everything was still dry.  “She didn’t even get into the shower.”

“She walked in here and something was waiting,”  Crowley said, his dry matter of fact tone all that helped Bobby hold on.  “All right, love.  I need to go…”

“We stick together,”  Dean growled.  Bobby shoved past him, out of the bathroom and through the motel room in Crowley’s wake.  He lunged, caught hold of Crowley’s shoulder and spun him while the Winchesters stared.

“You can’t go murderin’ somebody just so you can use your power,”  he said thickly, facing the angry and noncomprehending stare from the demon.  “Besides, we know who would want to take her and you can’t stand against him, you said so yourself.  If you could, you wouldn’t have played that suicide game that you did.  There’s no blood in that bathroom, no mess, whoever took her wants her alive.  As bait.”   Crowley stared back at him, the red flames in his eyes, body taut, but he did not pull free of Bobby’s hold.  Sam and Dean studied this exchange in disbelief, ranging up either side of Bobby.

“Lucifer could take us any time he wanted,”  Sam said suddenly.  “So this isn’t because he wants to kill us…”

“Though he no doubt does,”  Crowley snarled.

There was a knock on the door, which opened before anyone could move to answer it.  There was a young Hispanic woman wearing an apron with the logo of the diner Sam and Dean had just visited, but her eyes gleamed demonic yellow as she smiled.  “I have a message,”  she chirped.  “Lucifer promises he will not harm the child,  so long as you don’t try to find her until after next midnight and don’t interfere with the festivities.  If you do, she’ll be nailed to the front of the town hall and her innards will be tossed in the street.  Oh, except for you, Crowley.  You don’t go free whether you try to interfere or not.  Lucifer has plans for you, which I just know you won’t enjoy, so make the most of your last chance to be assfucked by your hunter.”

Crowley stared at her, a slight smile appearing on his face.  “Any chance I get, sweetheart,”  he said smoothly.  “Pity the only action you’ll see will involve Hell’s very finest torture chambers, once I have a moment to spare from dealing with your boss.  You’ve chosen the wrong side, which I’ll take pleasure in reminding you.”  A look of unease flashed across her face, and then the demon shrugged her shoulders and vanished.

“A demon made our burgers?”  Dean hissed, but it was halfhearted;  he knew the gravity of what had happened.   He and Sam watched Bobby go to sit down numbly on one of the beds, not looking at anything or anyone.  Dean touched his brother’s sleeve, indicating to him that he wanted him to stay with Bobby.  He then went to where Crowley still stood, his face unreadable.  The demon looked at him almost blankly, his eyes swirling demonic red.  This, Dean knew, meant Crowley at his most dangerous.  “Can we believe any of that message?”  Dean asked him point blank.

“You’ve dealt with Lucifer.  What do you think?  Sam, you were his bunkmate in Hell?  How honourable and trustworthy is he, Moose?”

Sam began to remonstrate but Dean overrode him.  “Not much chance then for betrayal, was there?”  he asked.  “But we need to know;  if we go after Kyra and he finds out we’re on the hunt, will he kill her or wait?”

Crowley’s eyes cleared and he gave Dean a short nod;  not a yes, but an acknowledgment that now they would put any enmity aside until the task was done.  “Prince of Lies, Squirrel,”  he said, his voice low and rasping and dark.  “If he succeeds in whatever he’s doing, she’ll be dead along with every other human and demon who’s not on his side.  It just won’t be by his hand, and that’s all he’s promised.  I think he’ll wait just so he can show her our remains.”

“The witch promised,”  Bobby growled, abrupt and angry.  Dean and Crowley moved instantly to him and knelt, his hand on Bobby’s knee.

“What do you mean, love?”  he asked.

“Asha Wintergreen, her prediction,”  Bobby mumbled.  “She said – I can’t remember – somethin’ about Kyra being a weapon – no, that she would grow into the weapon that would destroy him.  Not the exact words, but she used another one of Lucifer’s damn titles.  Not Prince of Lies, it was something else…”

“Morning Star?” asked Crowley and Bobby nodded.

“But Kyra had to mature into her power.  I don’t know what that means, like how much mature, what power. ”

“A prophecy isn’t cast in stone,”  Crowley said, thinking it through.  “If you act against it, if you change things enough, it fades or is delayed.  Lucifer took the witch’s body, he knows what was said.”

“He could possess Kyra again himself,”  Bobby whispered, knowing that was her worst fear.  He reached forward to grip Crowley’s arm, as though they were alone.  “You don’t know, because Rafael didn’t want you down in their magic-room but that young woman – I think she was – is - Rafael’s mother.  Is she – uh, the meatsuit - dead, can you tell?”

Crowley grimaced.  Part of him appreciated the perfectly timed cruelty of sending just that woman, possessed by one of Lucifer’s own, for Bobby to see and know his defeat.  But another part, not demonic at all, irrationally wanted to comfort Bobby inasmuch as that was possible right now.

“You’re not thinking, love.  You know demons often possess humans who are this side of the veil.  And that wasn’t Lucifer, so the meatsuit isn’t being harmed.”   He was aware of Sam and Dean’s flickering anger at that and reminded himself that he and humanity probably had differing views on what _harm_ meant.  He sighed deeply.  “If I say go get him and it results in, well, a worst case scenario, I’m sure you’ll pay me back for it.  If I say don’t, the same.  But for me, I’m not going to just wait here on the off chance Lucifer keeps his word.”  Crowley met his gaze squarely, maintaining the contact as though they were alone.  Bobby felt himself crumbling inside, desperate to head out into the night and go on the attack, never mind that he had no idea where to go. 

“Robert, consider the words of that message and you’ll know it doesn’t matter if he keeps his word.”  Crowley’s voice was gentler than either Winchester had ever heard it.  “Lucifer never says he wouldn’t wipe us all out, only that he wouldn’t kill _her_.  That could actually be true, if he takes her for his vessel.  He’d think it was most amusing to turn his own words around and kill us – or at least you three – before we could see Kyra again.  For me, I think he’s planning a bit of fun torture.”

“So what can we do?  Go out lookin’ for demons?”

“They’ve found us,”  Crowley shrugged very slightly, amused despite himself that all three hunters were now focused on him.  “And they’d never have let us into this town if they thought we could do anything at all against Lucifer or his plan.  We’ve been very neatly trapped.”

“You admit Lucifer’s smarter than you?”  Sam asked.

“There’s brains and there’s ability to use them, Moose.”  Crowley spoke without turning to look at Sam, though he climbed to his feet and stood by Bobby.  “Lucifer’s been going on a bit of a rampage, you may have noticed.  He’s not careful with his toys, so he is _not_ allowed to have nice things.  I think all he wants right now is all of us off the board so he can go back to playing without keeping an eye out for sharp pointy things aimed in his direction.”

“So that’s a yes,”  Sam concluded. 

Bobby looked up from his bleak considerations to see Dean opening the motel room door, revealing cloudswept sky and a gathering darkness.  Cold wind blew into the room, dropping the temperature from coolish summer morning to freezing night in moments.  “That can’t be good,”  Dean commented as he zipped his jacket.

“He’s bringing the night early again,”  Crowley said, as he might have remarked on the chance of rain.  “Come on, love, gird your loins.  Let’s step outside.  There’s something I want to see.”

“Do you have to discuss my loins?”  Bobby grumbled, while Dean made retching noises and Sam gazed heavenwards.  Moments later, they were outside, where the winds had grown stronger.  Bobby turned about to see whether anyone else was about and saw a group of the townsfolk standing on the path beyond the motel’s car park.  Then another, under the awning of a darkened building.  As he looked at them, their eyes flashed feral and deadly in the unnatural dark; yellow and red and white.  Demons all; five, seven, twelve…. His head spun dizzily as he counted and he was sure he smelled sulphur on the breeze.

There was the dark-haired young woman – Maria Catalano? - who had brought Lucifer’s message, curtseying mockingly to Crowley from the group on the sidewalk.  They had found the witches, Bobby knew, with a despairing certainty, each one occupied and directed by a demon.  That meant more demons than had ever been allowed out of Hell to roam the earth, because no ruler of Hell had ever been strong enough to compel their return.  But now, Lucifer _was_ strong enough.  He had something they wanted, something which would keep them to heel, which the combined power of the taken witches would achieve.  And he had Kyra.

Crowley was looking around at the demons surrounding them as though he had expected no less.  “Gather round, children,”  he said to Bobby and the Winchesters, with a sort of manic glee.  “We’re going on a journey.”

“But you can’t…”  Dean began and then swore softly and sincerely.  “You’ve been fucking with us about that, haven’t you?”

“Only Bobby….”

Bobby grabbed Crowley’s shoulder and spun him around hard.  He heard Dean swear again behind him as he looked at Crowley’s eyes flare red.  He felt not unlike someone who has gone to pat a dog and seen instead the savage glare of a wolf.  “You said you couldn’t travel.”  He kept his grip on the demon’s shoulder, levelly staring back at him.  Crowley laughed, shrugging off the accusation, but his first anger was gone and he did not shrug off Bobby’s hand.

“Darling, boys, would you truly like to stay here and cosy up with a crowd of demons?  I’d explain but there really isn’t a great deal of time.”

“Fine, get us out of here,”  Bobby growled, with a look to warn that they were going to get into this, soon.  Sam and Dean each placed a hand on Bobby’s shoulders and the moment that happened, Crowley set his mind to a certain destination and took them away.

 

End of the Alternate Season 13 of _Supernatural_

This is so not canon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me. There will be another season/story. And don't entirely forget about that outlaw motorcycle club.


End file.
